← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Good morning everybody.
- [00:01]
B
Welcome to Crypto town hall every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Dave, I thought the dollar was dying. Fiat was being inflated away to zero. What's, how can Fiat be having its revenge?
- [00:16]
A
Well and I wanted to get people's attention. Anyone who thinks that markets move in a straight line or utterly predictable, well they're the ones who end up getting liquidated. And it is, it is always funny when you see, you know, I made a statement and people interpreted it wrong. You know, I basically said when gold stalls, I. E Spend several weeks in a range seed instead have lost its momentum. Same with silver. Then that's probably when the rotation will happen toward bitcoin. That's just a tactical matter. That seems to be the case. Sort of like you know, the version of alt season. So people are like, well gold falls, that means it's negatively correlated bitcoin. And yet here you have today, everything's gone well. Okay, you know, that's markets, markets are perverse and tend to do the opposite of what the herd expects them to do. I don't think we're seeing anything different than that. But I wanted to get people's attention. I mean they're printing enormous amounts, you know, 8 to 10% of the, of the major fiat currencies every year. It's going to depreciate by that amount, but it's not going to do so in a straight line. That's really the point.
- [01:21]
B
I mean gold, to be fair, bitcoin bounced pretty nicely and gold is still at the candle lows for the day. So they're not exact, you know, we had kind of the move in the morning, bitcoin bouncing. You know, nothing's in a straight line. I guess the real story here, you know, Fiat's revenge, hahaha, is that the dollar is bouncing.
- [01:40]
A
Well, I mean the one thing that is true, and you can't argue this is, is if you're treasury secretary of dissent and you look at the 4 at the, at the 10 year below 4% going into a widely predicted rate cut, you're happy about that. Now admittedly you're happy about it, but you probably aren't selling anything because if you tried you'd push the rates back up. But hey, you know, take the win when you can get it. And so there is definitely, there's definitely action here. I just think it's amusing. The reason that I wanted this title was because I sat on a bunch of spaces yesterday where all the bitcoiners like well Fiat's dead. Why would you ever even use it? I mean, and, you know, Gary Cardone was there. He's not here this morning. But they were basically saying to Gary, well, you know, why do you need dollars? These are like, well, because I might want to buy stuff. And they're like, well, some people will take bitcoin. And it's just this complete disconnect from where we are versus where we will be. Now, I see Yago here. He and I agree on the long term, but I think, Yago, you're pretty rational about what things happen on the. In the short run. You know, people spend in dollars, and if you're smart, you're saving in bitcoin. And, you know, we keep making that point, but, you know, a lot of our audience wants to hear about what's going to be the next move so they can ape in with leverage. And, you know, I like, I hate. I don't want to encourage that. What I want people to do is if they have. If they have a thesis, implement it with discipline as opposed to, oh, changing on the dime. And you're seeing all sorts of influencers. And I use that term with air quotes saying, okay, the end is here. We're definitely going down to this level because this is what my chart pattern says. And I think that that's missing the forest for the trees.
- [03:21]
B
And so that Bitcoin's back over 110 as we speak, by the way. That's of some massive significance, but it's moving pretty hard 1 10.
- [03:30]
A
You know, I haven't sold a SAT, so.
- [03:34]
B
I'm selling all of my bitcoin right here because it's finally moved 1% in a day.
- [03:39]
A
I mean, there you go.
- [03:40]
B
My whole life sarcasm, people.
- [03:43]
A
We finally got some hands to come up from all this sarcastic.
- [03:46]
B
And by the way, yeah, Andre bitwise had that great chart that showed effectively that if even a 2 or 3% or 3 or 4% rotation from gold to bitcoin would effectively send Bitcoin to 250 moment in a moment. Right.
- [04:01]
A
Okay, good. So we've gotten the panel engage. Awesome. That's. That's our job. Andrea, how about it? You're first. I think it goes Andre Panos. Yago lawyered. Yeah.
- [04:14]
C
So, yeah, you're completely right. So that was our chart of the week we posted yesterday. And I mean, it's like a citrus party was kind of all. All else equal analysis. But what is it essentially says is you only need around 4% in capital rotation from gold to bitcoin for bitcoin to double to go above 200k from here. The reason is it's just due to the fact that the gold, that gold market cap is so huge, right. It's the single most valuable asset, right. With close to 300 trillion, I mean $30 trillion.
- [04:53]
A
Right.
- [04:54]
C
I mean today it's crashing. It looks like it's crashing. But so our thesis was, and I think I've mentioned this last Tuesday when I came came onto the spaces, right. Essentially bitcoin versus gold is risk on, risk off. So bitcoin tends to outperform and risk on and vice versa.
- [05:15]
D
Right.
- [05:15]
C
Gold tends to perform risk off. So our, our key, key vision for or key expectation for, for the coming months and going into 2026 is that we see this kind of renewed business cycle upturn in U.S. right. I think like Julian Biddle from Global Macro Investor had a similar view. But if, if you enter in such a scenario, so a kind of risk on scenario, growing rising global growth expectations and so on, I think the performance leadership tends to change.
- [05:51]
E
Right.
- [05:51]
C
In favor of bitcoin relative to gold. It doesn't mean that gold necessarily crashes.
- [05:56]
A
Right.
- [05:57]
C
But yeah, I think at least in relative terms it's more likely in such a scenario that bitcoin tends to overcome.
- [06:09]
B
Who is next? Dave, you had the lineup.
- [06:11]
A
Panos I think was next.
- [06:13]
F
Yeah, I think an interesting chart that no one's really talking about is the gold versus US Treasuries chart. And I believe it's like the first time since 1996 that foreign central banks are actually holding a greater share of gold than they are US Treasuries. So they're selling off their U S Treasuries into gold. And I personally think this is going to continue and gold could probably go a bit higher. And everyone's looking at gold right now as a bit toppy and like a top signal because you've got all the retail guys lining up to buy gold. But if you look at foreign like nation states, they're actually selling off their Treasuries for physical gold and filling up.
- [06:56]
A
Their bolts with it.
- [06:57]
F
And I don't see many people talking about that.
- [07:00]
A
Yeah, I mean I don't think it's.
- [07:03]
E
Accurate to say that they're selling off.
- [07:05]
B
I was just going to say that yeah, they're just buying gold.
- [07:07]
A
They're just buying gold. But, but I think that it's important to understand that if you were listening to our show yesterday, I explained why gold and silver was going to be dramatically more volatile for a while. And so looking at these 3 to 4% drops in 1, 5 to 7% drops in the other. Shouldn't surprise you. It's because the marginal price setter of both have been people using CFDs on leverage. This is something that we in the crypto space know very well. It doesn't mean the trend is over. It doesn't mean anything other than the fact that it's going to be more volatile. And so there are ways of playing that, but you should expect it. So none of this should be all that surprising. Central banks couldn't give a crap. They're accumulating slowly and they're the ones who have been driving gold for the most part of the run. But the blow off toppy part of the run, the one that creates the parabolas, are the price setters that are these leveraged nut jobs. Same dgens in gold and silver that we have on all coins. So understand that.
- [08:05]
G
Pretty sure.
- [08:05]
A
I think it was lawyered next.
- [08:10]
H
Well, I mean it's a little, a little off topic, but I just wanted to say how brilliant I thought the, the way that Coinbase split the payment for Echo and bought a bit of a podcast there that I. Yeah, next topic, next topic.
- [08:27]
B
Yeah, let's, let's, let's stay on Bitcoin. But yeah, it was. And the way that they rolled that out to make it look like it was simply the podcast before making the announcement. Yeah, it was pretty. No, think Yago was up next. We can, we can get back to that one lawyer over the bitcoin conversation.
- [08:41]
D
Sure.
- [08:41]
A
Yo.
- [08:42]
E
Well, yeah, I mean, I think Dave opened the, the call saying, you know, I represent sort of like the Bitcoin maxi wing and although sometimes I'm more reasonable and that, you know, everyone's expecting gold dollars to disappear and everyone's talking about the dollar debasement trade. I think it's important to recognize that these are processes that occur over decades, not years. We have this sort of, you know, gradually then suddenly meme that, you know, and everyone's waiting for the sudden suddenly. This suddenly is not going to come. You could look at just a few examples of, of much, much weaker, less strategic countries. Zimbabwe and Venezuela had hyperinflation periods. They're now off that Argentina had a hyperinflation period. They're, you know, now they're, they're not in the hyperinflationary period anymore. Turkey's had very high inflation, Russia's very high inflation. In fact, even the most famous inflationary period in the world, which was vmar, lasted from 1921 to 1923. People forget that World War II started only 15 years or 16 years after the, the hyperinflationary period had been tamed already. Right? Germany had a massive six year economic boom after its hyphen hyperinflationary period until 1929 when the entire world crashed. So, you know, none of these countries had the global reserve currency, had the mighty resources of the US Were, you know, were as integrated with the, with the global economy, had the entire Silicon Valley AI Industrial complex. The U. The US Is not going to disappear tomorrow. It's not like it's sliding off the. Off the side of a flat earth. This is a very, very long process. And so you're going to continue to see this process play out with ups and downs for the next decades to come. Not. You know, it's not. It's true that nothing stops this train, but that also means that the train isn't hitting a wall.
- [10:56]
B
Andre.
- [11:00]
C
No, I just want to chime in on that bullish gold thesis based on. On the percentage share in global reserves, right? I mean, the expectation is that we're moving back to this kind of pre1971 Bretton woods agreement gold standard, right? That's like the bullish thesis for gold. Like Treasuries are not the reservists anymore. We're moving back to gold. But like, I mean, Bitcoin's already cannibalizing a certain percentage share of. Of that narrative, right? So it, I mean, over the very long term, we know Bitcoin will eventually disrupt gold, right? We don't know when it will happen. Probably like, it's probably more of a ten year kind of thing, right? Ten year kind of timeline, but I don't think we'll. We'll go back to 70%. I think it's rather unlikely because, yeah, we know Bitcoin is technologically superior. It's better transferability, better divisibility, better veri. Verifiability, you name it.
- [12:04]
I
Right?
- [12:05]
C
So, yeah, I just want to say that.
- [12:11]
B
J. Do you see any hands?
- [12:12]
E
Dave?
- [12:15]
A
Amateo.
- [12:15]
B
Adam, did you have. Yeah, go ahead. I don't even see Amateo on stage, so.
- [12:18]
A
That's okay. I'm sorry for asking. You're the host. I figured you.
- [12:22]
B
No, no, no, that's why I'm asking. I don't. I clearly don't see him. Amateo is not even on stage. Amateo.
- [12:27]
A
And Ali is also a speaker and he has his hand up after I was half.
- [12:30]
D
Can you hear me?
- [12:32]
I
Yes, we can.
- [12:32]
D
Okay. I see myself as a listener too, for what it's worth.
- [12:39]
B
Yeah.
- [12:40]
D
And you guys can stop me if you have this in your agenda for later. But we're talking about the dynamic tension between the dollar gold, kind of the Fed debasement trade and bitcoin.
- [12:52]
A
Right.
- [12:53]
D
And I think something that is not getting enough attention is the fact that there's an actual conference today being held by the Federal Reserve that's titled the Payments Innovation Conference that's going to be held at the Fed's headquarters Today in Washington D.C. you'll start to see pictures and kind of the lineup around this, but they're talking about bridging traditional finance and the digital asset ecosystem. All the big players are going to be there. I don't know if the full extensive lineup has been posted, but Dave, you'll appreciate that I couldn't find Ripple on the docket or any guest passes. They might be there, but I didn't see it. But this is involving stablecoin, bitcoin risk. And I think what we're actually seeing here is not this versus narrative of bitcoin versus dollar versus gold. We're actually seeing an entrenchment of the digital asset ecosystem being fully embraced by the power structure that's managing these assets, which is the Federal Reserve in terms of the dollar. And this is.
- [13:59]
A
Yeah, it's a huge story. I agree.
- [14:02]
D
It's a huge story. And, and big part of this is going to be stablecoin use cases and business models. And you know, a lot of people don't think this, but Dave and I have agreed, I think on this point, which is stablecoins will help continue to assert dollar dominance in a world where, where we have different geopolitical powers which are clearly trying to move maybe away from the dollar. It's stablecoins, this digital asset ecosystem, that can actually really be used to fortify dollar dominance as the de facto digital currency for stablecoin payments. So I just think that this is a big story and I think what we're not seeing is like this. What's going to win over the next few months? I do think it will take longer. We're seeing an entrenchment of the digital asset ecosystem being embraced and that itself is going to have long tailwinds that we can't really foresee yet in the market.
- [15:04]
A
Well, I mean, look, the digital tokenization is to traditional finance what the internal combustion engine was to transportation. Right. You know, it really is that. In fact, it is arguably. It may actually be an order of magnitude bigger change in terms of the speed of transactions, safety of transactions, et cetera, as an underlying technology. And this is not lost on this administration. This is not lost on anyone who understands the technology. It is, of course, completely lost on central bankers, for the most part, many of which are the same people that were conducting Operation Choke Point, trying to put our entire industry out of business. But the fact that it's revolutionary change, not evolutionary, is a big deal. Right? And Caitlin Long had Vantage, had an interesting tweet this morning, which I retweeted and reposted because it's telling you it's signaling. Step two, step one is get stablecoins to replace ACHs and other antiquated technologies at the heart of payments, and that will allow certain business models. Step two is to now that that is true and it's tokenized, add in other tokenized assets on the same platforms for instantaneous transfers and. Or trades, meaning that you can have business models where your payments is being done from the same account as investments. And the first set of investments will be yield bearing. The second set of investments will be other investments, such as Bitcoin, for example, and making saving in Bitcoin spending in fiat much easier. But your point, Mateo, which you and I agree on totally, is it portends that the dollar becomes the. You know, we always make the joke that in the world of fiat, the dollar is, is, is the best of a crappy bunch. Well, really, they just want to be the. We want the dollar to be the unit of account for trade, and you can save it whatever the hell you want to save it. I personally believe that Bitcoin makes the most sense, but there's all sorts of other things to save it, other investments. And I certainly have other investments as well as probably everyone on the stage does. So it really is a big deal. You know, as far as the crack about Ripple, look, I actually, let's be clear, I'm very bullish. If I had Ripple Labs Equity, I'd be, I, I would think that's a pretty interesting case. I mean, some of its value, too much of its value probably has to do with the token, which I still don't understand the value of the token, but I absolutely understand the value of everything that Ripple is trying to do, all the partnerships, relationships, software, et cetera. And I'd like to see some transparency on it, but then again, not a public company, so why would they give it? But no, I have nothing against anything that Brad Garlinghouse has done, and I actually think he's done a lot of good things for the industry. My criticism is really still questioning curiosity criticism. I've yet to hear a single argument how a token like XRP can appreciate in value as much as the XRP army thinks it's going to, when the very fact of its appreciation would limit its utility because right now its utility is based on it being cheap. So I don't really understand. Let's clarify my case here. I have nothing against Ripple in the ecosystem and trying to build. If anything, I wish them the best of luck. That makes sense. Alateo. I'm sorry, I just wanted to get it right because I'm happy to be the Peter Schiff of XRP in a sense, but not of Ripple Labs.
- [18:29]
D
That's a wild take. But yeah, I appreciate that, Dave. It actually really helps understand and clarify your position. You know, I, when it comes to xrp, I do see the benefit to what they're doing on a pure technology technological front. I just think it's much more competitive and there hasn't been a winner in the race yet. And then of course when it comes to the token, because there hasn't been a winner in the race to see how it justifies the value. But let's move on from that conversation. There's more.
- [18:58]
E
Right?
- [18:58]
A
No, I understand. It does get me a lot of, a lot of hate mail, which I always find amusing. But I like the conversation anyway. Ally, you're next.
- [19:06]
G
Yeah, good morning. So yeah, I was on the Artemis terminal in regards to the bitcoin gold conversation earlier. So I was looking at the one year percentage returns across traditional and digital assets. So they're looking at, you know, Bitcoin ETH Gold, the QQQ and the S&P 500, but just focusing on, on bitcoin and gold. So I was just, you know, looking back at it. So it looks like there's some kind of pattern here where it's like. So with the one year percentage returns of bitcoin and gold as it comes close to each other or starts to have a similar percentage return, where bitcoin kind of comes down and gold kind of comes up shortly after, we actually see bitcoin really like ripping up right afterwards in terms of its performance, it really does just kind of diverge away and shoot up. And then the first instance where I saw this was around like November 2024 where the returns between gold and bitcoin were similar. Then shortly after bitcoin took off and then as the returns declined over time and then gold started to gain some steam, we saw the returns come close again. In April of this year. And then with bitcoin performance now returning, you know, it went back up shortly after. And then looking at it recently now with a small dip from, you know, an 85% return on Bitcoin now down to about 60%. And then gold is now at about a 60% return, similar to bitcoin. I would think now kind of using this pattern, you know, we can definitely predict a rise in bitcoin performance if gold starts to slow down here. So yeah, back to you.
- [21:07]
B
I don't see any hands, Dave.
- [21:08]
A
You Andre?
- [21:10]
B
Yeah, I saw that.
- [21:13]
C
Yeah. I just want to say think about the, the levels of sentiment in each of those assets. I mean bitcoin and crypto sentiment, right, it's probably, it's dead, right? We sellers have essentially been wiped out, right, by these liquidations at these retests of the lows, right, That I think then essentially no more big sellers left us literally selling on the other end. Gold sentiment is probably at all time highs.
- [21:45]
D
Right?
- [21:47]
C
All time high euphoria. So I, for me, these trades, so long, bitcoin and short gold, right. Is probably the most asymmetric right now.
- [21:57]
A
Right.
- [21:59]
C
And what's also super interesting, the bitcoin gold ratio correlates very well with mstr. So I think it essentially implies that you have some kind of renewable cycle if like gold crashes. And.
- [22:18]
A
Yeah, but the question, Andre, is this, I mean the dynamics of this market, and you know this better than probably anybody on the panel is tilted towards the buyers of bitcoin. Why is bitcoin not trading in the 80s in the 8 with an 80,000 kind of handle right now the reason is because the buyers are institutional based going through what were non levered platforms, whether ETFs or treasuries or Spot in the United States. Whereas the price setter for the last, and I'm going to say it for the three cycles that mattered in terms of having or having actually dominated the marginal price setter were speculators. And we know this because the relative volume of perps versus versus the spot. And we know top of all three cycles there were ridiculous funding rates and people were paying to be long to get leverage because I need more, more, more, more, more. And everyone was levering up. Now when we hit the last all time, we hit the all time high, which is the, you know, a piffle cycle, right? You know, double the last all time high at the same time that the bitcoin hash rate is up by 6. That inflation alone would basically mean the all time high is maybe a 30% increase on the last cycle top. There was no leverage being taken. The funding rates were below actual standard. So we know that the marginal price setter is spot in gold. We know the marginal price setter for the first part of the rally from to somewhere in the mid-3000s at least was central banks. Right? Same kind of deal, slow steady appreciation supply being drained away. And as Euphoria said in then in gold you get these ridiculous leverage and buying. Now this trend doesn't stop, right? You know, even when bitcoin had made its last all time high, the one in the 60s, people have to always forget this. It went crazy to like you know, 60, 61,000. Leverage was huge. There was a big dip. Everyone thought the end was nigh and it rallied right back up to 69,000 once again with enormous speculation. And then the bottom dropped out.
- [24:32]
E
Boom.
- [24:32]
A
And we all know why.
- [24:34]
E
Luna.
- [24:34]
A
A deleveraging event. Well, guess what? Crypto just had a massive deleveraging event and we didn't see anything close to the carnage that you might have expected. Why? Because they weren't the price setters. So this is a diatribe. I probably should video this and timestamp it but the trut. Is that what you're seeing? I mean, am I wrong? I mean is that not where the price.
- [24:58]
E
I'm not sure. I, I. The data that I've been looking at doesn't seem to bear out that story. It's true that we went through a deleveraging event, but it wasn't nearly as massive as people seem to think it was. So we went from. I'll take ETH as an example because it was hit harder than bitcoin. Right. So eth on the eve of October 10th, which is when the flash crash happened, had an IO of 30 billion. A week later its IO was back above 20 billion which was still far in excess of historic norms. So way above what we've been seeing over, you know, the last ever. And so we generally see almost no impact from the flash crash to perps volumes. There is a slight reduction, but not huge IO has decreased by between depending on the assets, between if we're looking at the majors, 15 and 20% from what were all time highs to still being at very, very high in historic levels. To me this flash crash seems now that I've had some time to, to sort of look at the outcome to have been mostly a, a a a technical blip on the exchanges with far less real world impact than what most.
- [26:39]
A
It depends what impact on what. I mean I think the impact on a lot of altcoins is pretty enduring. You know my, our favorite, you know, fart coin. I love to point that one out but you know, it's. You're right, it's differential, but there's two sides to every trade. Right. Yaga, you know, when specifically I'm talking.
- [26:58]
E
About in terms, in terms of perps, volumes and open interest.
- [27:04]
A
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, absolutely.
- [27:07]
E
Prices, prices sort of were, were hit. Definitely. Although again there, you know, certainly I'm bitcoin. You know, everything took like a, like, like a hit and then semi recovered. But, but in terms of, and this is specifically what you were talking about, the preponderance of leverage that we currently have, it's actually very, very high and was only marginally reduced.
- [27:39]
A
Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to be. I mean it's sort of like asking yourself the question, do you want. It's good to be the house, right? You know, the casino is open and alive and well and people will continue to recycle. And we always forget just how small the crypto market cap is to global liquidity flows and people's ability to gamble. Right. You know, and remember a lot of people made a lot of money when the liquidation happened. When you get both sides of it is that money got recycled as well. And it's not like they're, they're perma bears or perma bulls. I mean maybe there are perma bull. There probably are some, but I think the majority of traders do both sides. So. Yeah, you're right. I mean that's not, that's not that surprising. Andre.
- [28:18]
C
Now I just want to say I totally agree with your view that this cycle has been dominated by institutional bias.
- [28:25]
G
Right.
- [28:26]
C
Essentially we've seen long term holder distributions, guys like Roger bear dumping 80k so to speak.
- [28:33]
D
Right.
- [28:33]
C
Bitcoin, while ETPs, corporate treasury companies have been buying up.
- [28:39]
H
Right.
- [28:40]
C
The these kind of distributions. I was just referring to the liquidations in terms of sentiment because we know we, we talked about these numbers at n. Right. We talked about these 19 billion-plus in liquidations. We talked about the decline in open interest, which was crazy. 10 billion or I think 11 billion in Bitcoin and 9 billion in East Open interest.
- [29:02]
A
Right.
- [29:03]
C
Was the biggest nominal decline in open interest ever recorded. Funding rates spiked down.
- [29:10]
D
Right.
- [29:11]
C
Went negative. Implied vault spiked, the options Q spiked. All kinds of indicators that were essentially signaling select short shin.
- [29:21]
G
Right.
- [29:21]
C
And people buying protection and being liquidated. Of course.
- [29:28]
A
Anybody else on this topic or should, because we don't, I don't Want to run out of time. I think you lawyered. You wanted to talk about Coinbase, and I think it is interesting, so why.
- [29:37]
D
Don'T you go ahead?
- [29:38]
H
They pitched. They. It was. We first heard that they bought up only, like, eight episodes for $25 million, which is, like, somewhere between really cool and, like, fraud, because that's just a big waste of money, right? And then everyone's talking about it, and then they say they bought Echo, which is his platform, for 375 million, which fits squarely with a $400 million purchase price that they then maybe split off because now they've got up, only they've got all this chatter they've got that will turn into a commercial. It's just so brilliant versus just buying. Like, they could have structured it in some boring way, any boring way that is just less interesting than this. And I think two things. One is just really cool and two could spark some positivity in our industry. I think people really, really like Kobe.
- [30:34]
A
Yeah. I mean, interesting. I didn't see who was first being Adam and Amateo. So we'll go with Adam, just left to right. Adam, you there? Okay. Going along.
- [30:48]
E
You're talking about Adam McBride, right?
- [30:50]
A
Yeah. Your hand is up. You don't want to talk. Okay. All right, I'll jump in.
- [30:58]
D
Yeah.
- [30:58]
A
What's up?
- [30:59]
D
So, basically, there's a lot of things about this that are really interesting. Agree with lawyer that as a marketer, I love the Strat because it got everyone's minds blown for people who maybe weren't here. Kobe and Ledger's show up only was very, like, definitive in the last cycle, but also kind of went down in a blaze of glory as they were sponsored by FTX and had some streams with what's his name, Don Ko or whatever from Luna, as well as. Thank you.
- [31:38]
B
Martin Shkreli and SBF at the same.
- [31:42]
D
Time, and SBF at the same time.
- [31:43]
E
And.
- [31:43]
D
And Martin Shkreli was. Was. Was. Was giving advice about going to jail to both of them and they had to drop off the call. It was incredible. Pretty historic for the space. But so. So, I mean, I think when you look at this one, the fact that Echo Dot got this kind of valuation, I'm going to have to dig into this more. It's pretty incredible. But I think what it signals is something much deeper. That's Coinbase buying an on chain, public, ico, IDO platform. That means that they are getting into the space of token launches for the general public and opening the doors for people to pile in to early invest in projects. Now, of course, that's good and that's bad because a lot of these projects don't amount to things. And in this current cycle that's been absolutely brutal. A lot of projects just trade dramatically under their ICO price, which is not great for investors. But everyone loves this early access for the potential to invest in a winner. That shows just how dramatic the regulatory space has completely radically transformed the fact that Coinbase would dip their toes in the water to let people do this. And I think that that's the bigger story behind this. And we should all be going, hot damn, this is going to get wild.
- [33:16]
B
I'm just trying to make NFT of our show Crypto Town hall and exit for 25 million for eight more shows. Can we do that?
- [33:25]
H
To me, this, this shows something that I've been dealing with, which is like, and I love it, which is, you know, we've been. Lawyers in the space have been dancing around things, a different regulatory system and now we can sort of say, look, you know, if you want to be bold, this might be, you know, we're just assessing risks. And that a risk assessment in America, I think, has changed. Even if it's not as, you know, you can't be concise and say exactly what maybe they should. Like, you have to be a little, you know, broaden your wording when you're giving legal advice. But it, it's really opened the door to be a little more creative and say, hey, you know, maybe this will work.
- [34:02]
J
Dave, am I back? Can you hear me now, man?
- [34:04]
A
Yeah, I hear you.
- [34:05]
D
Yeah.
- [34:05]
J
Oh, thanks, man. I got a little rug there, I thought. I mean, first of all, the NFT sale, which I loved, my NFT friends were like, NFTs are back. I was like, bro, this is so obviously a marketing stunt. Like anybody who didn't see that as a marketing stunt immediately, bro, open your eyes a little bit. But so, I mean, it was pretty obvious to me a marketing stun. I'm actually really interested in the price. They've probably at this time greatly overpaid. But I actually think Brian is smart here. You know, what we've seen in the past is when Coinbase tries to build something, they, they really struggle to build something. And I think this was like forward leaning. I don't know who just made the point of, of just like going into this regulatory environment is so much more open that they were able to, to see, hey, this is the way it's going. Basically a token launching platform, IPO platform. Let's just Go out and grab one. And grabbing one literally with the biggest voice, you know, paying for Kobe, where Kobe's going to be the voice of this most likely, at least in the short term, going forward. I think it's really just, it's genius. They bought the marketing as well as the platform itself. I really tip my hat to Brian for actually making this happen. Rather than trying to do something on their own and slow rolling it and being a piece of garbage, just go grab the best one in the space and buy the marketing arm with it. I think was, was quite brilliant.
- [35:31]
A
I see Yago's hand.
- [35:34]
D
Yeah.
- [35:35]
E
So I in my mind Coinbase have been pursuing a strategy of building the one stop shop for crypto from the very, very beginning. That was their pitch from the time that they were raising seed round and as crypto becomes bigger and bigger and becomes more and more integrated, the value of that rises significantly. So you know, one of their other really great acquisitions which don't seem like they, they have anything to do with each other was their acquisition of Bison Trails which allowed them to build the institutional custodial system. Now they're the custodian for almost all of the ETFs. Then on top of that they purchased Deribit were primary options platform. So now all of those custodial players can trade on the exchange, can trade options, can trade futures all out of the custodial wallet that they have. And so they're effectively creating these moats around Coinbase where once your funds are within the Coinbase environment, it doesn't make sense to move them out. And in fact, if your funds are outside of the Coinbase environment, you're at a disadvantage. Right? It's, it's you, you need to send your funds into the, you know, Deribit and have deribit custody of the funds anyway. But you can't use your native custodial solution unless you're the custodian. And so here they're doing that kind of thing again where they're, they're basically looking to, to expand their ecosystem in such a way that you're, you're forced to into their environment. So they've got base, they've been encouraging more and more development of base that has allowed them significant revenue but significant capture over D5, significant capture over Ethereum. And my view, and what they're trying to do here is expand into what they see as the, the most important market that they can tackle going forward. Right? They've got the institutional players, they've got defi, they've Got Custodian, a custodian platform and they've got millions of KYC users in the US and the US is broken in terms of its IPO market. It's basically impossible to IPO in the US if you're not a mega cap. And so my what I suspect they're going to try and do is turn base into a real world asset platform. They're going to try and turn Echo into the way that you as a midcap smaller company, instead of going to NASDAQ or S&P 500, you can launch yourself as a, basically launch your stock as a real, real world asset in crypto, gain the Coinbase audience and from there a global audience and, and, and basically turn Echo into an effective several years from now Competitor to S P 500 and NASDAQ an entirely new index of companies and assets which trade with 24,7 global liquidity and access.
- [38:54]
A
I mean, yes, I agree directionally with what you're saying. I think that it also is telling you that Coinbase is willing to do something that a lot of firms aren't. Traditionally most of the big financial firms refuse to make big investments on the basis of agency directions. And what we call, and this for the lawyers out there, exemptive relief. Because with the fear that a future SEC could come along and undo it, this SEC is essentially signaling that yes, they want to improve disclosures for new projects and yes, they want to, you know, to the extent that they are given authority over it and there is no se, there is no CFTC right now because we have one commissioner who's interrupted, but that the CFTC will have it. But the, the prevailing belief is that there will be a path for issuance that will not be subject to the brutal attack where effectively no US issuance could happen, you know, under the Gensler regime. And that is a massive sea change. And what's interesting here is Coinbase is putting their money where their mouth is and they're basically saying, okay, you know, you guys, JP Morgan's and all the other firms, you're going to wait until you see this enshrined in law. We're going to the start. To us, the starters pistol is already fired and we're going to start making those investments. And all I have to say is I think that that's a good bet on their side. I think that, you know, this is one of those things that I don't think the train of innovation could be stopped. And I think Brian is making a brilliant move to get in front of this, expect to See more fireworks on.
- [40:34]
B
We paid a lot for it.
- [40:35]
J
What do you think about that? What do you think about the price, Dave? Assuming that. I mean these guys don't make, they barely make anything on these sales. So I'm wondering. Yeah. What you think about that?
- [40:44]
A
I think it's a, it. What's, how much money do people spend on marketing and how do you long do you amortize it?
- [40:50]
B
Exactly right. It's the marketing side.
- [40:52]
A
It's, it's, you know, people spend.
- [40:54]
H
Do we know how much of this.
- [40:55]
A
Was people, People spend a lot of money to get stakes in the ground first. Right. You know, what's that worth? And, and I'm not saying it's a good trade. I don't know if it's a good trade or a bad trade. I just know that if, if I were running a very large company right now, there are a few foundational technologies, a few things that get you to starters. Place first. I mean look at, at what Stripe was it? Stripe paid for the stablecoin platform that had basically no revenues. But most everyone, you know, they paid billions, right? You know, over a billion and a half. I forgot the name of it, but you guys.
- [41:27]
B
Yeah, that's correct. Bridge or something.
- [41:29]
A
Yeah, something like that. They had like no revenues but they had a lead on the technology and they, and Stripe said okay, we can monetize it. So the real question is can coinbase monetize it, not what is it valued now? And so the same thing is true with any technology. I mean, you know, if you have the best, well, whatever. I mean, I don't want to get self serving here, but there's lots of really good tech companies in the space that don't have a huge amount of competition and those are going to get, those are going to get crazy multiples as this cycle moves on up. So people are, if you move fast, you don't pay the crazy multiple.
- [41:59]
B
By the way, just as an aside, bitcoin's pushing pretty nicely right now, up over 112,000 and kind of at the session highs, I believe silver dumped like 8 or 9% or something off the top and gold is grinding downward. So.
- [42:17]
F
Interesting.
- [42:18]
B
I don't think you can draw any grand conclusions from it, but let's just say bitcoin's having a really nice move here off those low lows from this morning.
- [42:26]
A
Yeah, well, you know, the real, the real when we do these, this, this when everyone's predictions at the end of the year and all the crypto influencers that have gone short and all the technicians that have gone short get their faces ripped off and we're talking with a 200 handle and it's still 20, 25. And I do think that's possible. I think that's when it'll be interesting. I mean, I don't really care about daily squiggles, but yeah, you're right, there's, there is a bid here and the question is who's the seller and when. A lot of the sellers are the hot money sellers, we all know what happens to them. And expect when you see funding that rates this low for this long, you know that there's, that there's a short squeeze potential. This is probably not it, but you know, we'll see. You know, it's one of those things that you should just be exceedingly careful. Iago, I'm sure you have an opinion on that and the other stuff.
- [43:13]
E
Well, yeah, I mean I think the, the theme that we've been talking about sort of under the surface this entire conversation, is the institutionalization of crypto. Institutional money playing a more and more significant role. And I think that that ties directly to echo. So I think the bigger story here, the implication, if my theory is correct, that this is going to be a way to introduce real world assets and allow sort of real businesses to, to, to ipo. What that means is that we're going to start seeing the real economy being represented on chain far more rapidly than I think most people consider possible. And with that you're going to see tradfi, institutional money managers, analysts, begin to look at the crypto space out of necessity. And so the borders between tradfi and crypto are being blurred. And the more that happens, the more the infrastructural advantages that you were talking about that crypto has, global Access, self custody, 247 access, instant settlement. The more that the, the, the, the crypto sort of world perforates the tradfi world, the more the infrastructure that underlies it is going to start replacing trad fi infrastructure And Yago.
- [44:52]
A
I don't know if you saw this story, Eleanor Terry and I think was the one who broke it. It's, it's obviously only a proposal, but you know, I'm reading, you know that one of the Fed governors, President Waller, announces the central bank is proposing a limited access or skinny master account that would give legally eligible institutions direct access to Fed's payment rails without having to go through the money center banks. I don't think you can, I literally don't think I can overestimate how Important that would be in terms of allowing trust banks to be able to effectively. It effectively takes away the oligopoly of the banking card cartel on the. The end number 5 trillion, 6 trillion of deposits that they have that are, that they keep, that they pay no interest on. It'll effectively open up business models. That is a very big deal. And Caitlin Longwood's probably obviously the person to comment. I just tagged her. Yeah, of course I did too. Right. But you know, to me that could be a very big deal. But that is what you're talking about, Yaga. You're talking about opening up the system.
- [45:52]
E
Yeah. Stable coins becoming the dominant form of currency. Bitcoin becoming the dominant form of. Yeah. And collateral more generally like the primary reserve and, and then crypto Rails being the primary form of transaction for both payments and more importantly financial transactions. And then all assets being represented on chain. This. It's, you know, it's the. It's happening meme. It's literally happening. And, and I think that that's going to see a significant improvement in a lot of the types of offerings that we see in crypto. Crypto has been a casino with, you know, shitcoin tokens being the primary driver for the first time, you know, for the last 10 years of the altcoin world. The next 10 years are not going to be driven by the altcoin universe. They're going to be driven by things which aren't coins at all, which represent real world assets. And I think the primary is going to be equity type assets and then the secondary is going to be debt type assets, all traded with stable coins and ultimately savings, like long term savings accruing primarily to bitcoin.
- [47:13]
A
And speaking of that.
- [47:17]
B
Nice.
- [47:18]
A
Travis, you and Travis are, are working on some stuff that kind of fits right, with what we were talking about.
- [47:23]
D
Right? Yeah. Yeah.
- [47:28]
I
Very nice. Yeah. Yago, so nice to see you again, good sir. How is, how's life in the bitcoin coin world treating you?
- [47:37]
E
It's, it's a lot of work and, and fast. Fascinating heart rendering, deeply emotional work at that, you know.
- [47:48]
I
So what a great conversation has been going on here today. I mean there's a lot of really great threads that are happening in this one today. So if you guys haven't tuned in early, go ahead and re. Listen to this one because there's, there's a lot of nuggets in this one. A lot of potential blog posts and videos potentially could come from the content that we were just discussing. Great stuff. I want to ask a Bit. So I tell you, I've done over 200 of these Mario spaces, mostly the video ones, and I've seen so many projects and I just think, you know, not financial advice. In my opinion, Bitcoin os, the one that you're working on, is one of the best ones that I've seen. And I think it's, it's so interesting of what, what you're doing with that. So if you could maybe give people that is the, the elevator pitch of what is Bitcoin os? Why is it important? What does it seek to do?
- [48:37]
E
Yeah, so we've had this, okay, so maybe a little bit about myself and sort of how I got you. I've been involved in Bitcoin now for almost a decade and a half, building in the space.
- [48:46]
A
And.
- [48:49]
E
Probably I'm best known for helping pioneer two things. One is the idea of Bitcoin DEFI back in 2020 and building the largest ecosystem of Bitcoin defi platforms and then introducing the first thinking around serious implementation of ZK in Bitcoin. And then last year demonstrating for the first time in block 853626 that it was actually possible and that we actually did it on mainnet without changing Bitcoin at all. We were able to demonstrate that you can use ZK and Bitcoin to do roll ups, to do programmability. And then since then we've been building out Bitcoin os, which is an operating system built on Bitcoin, which allows Bitcoin to finally become a fully programmable platform and to do more than that, to integrate with other chains so that other chains can seamlessly become effectively modules of, of Bitcoin. And the reason I think this is all so important is because the world that we are moving into is a world where crypto infrastructure, if it was not fragmented and if it was reliable long term, would become the, the base infrastructure of money, the base infrastructure of finance, the base infrastructure of business. And, and through that, the base infrastructure of everybody's financial freedom. And, and, and, and unfortunately we've got this, you know, massive amount of highly fragmented infrastructure that we've built instead. And so what we've seen over the last 18 months in particular is a massive move of institutions into the space and they've moved almost entirely into Bitcoin. You talk to family offices, you talk to fund managers, and you look at the data, 95% of the institutional activity is with Bitcoin. And so by bringing programmability to Bitcoin, we allow BTC to become something that you I and institutions can utilize as collateral, can introduce into defi, can earn yield on without having to send it to Binance or you know, to some kind of third party, but can maintain its most important property, which is the ability for us to maintain our own custody. And at the same time Bitcoin can become the, the neutral platform which integrates all of the rest of crypto, turning crypto from this very, very fragmented and as result sort of casino like environment into an actual Internet of value where everything is integrated, everything has a high degree of security and everything ultimately is built on the one piece of tech infrastructure that we've built, which does not change, which is always reliable, which doesn't look like software, but looks like something far more permanent, which is Bitcoin.
- [52:05]
I
Yeah, you know what's interesting, and that's a really great point you made there about the institutional, you know, need for their own custody. Now I'm looking at the Bitcoin treasuries.net site. There's the top 100 public Bitcoin treasury companies, right? And there's on the list, there's the top 100 and then the rest of them, there's like maybe another 40 or so. These are just public traded companies, right? These are not, these are not private Bitcoin treasury companies. And my concern, and now we're starting to see more governments having Bitcoin Treasuries. So just alone based on public companies that are holding Bitcoin, that's over a million. How many private companies are holding Bitcoin in a Treasury? How many governments are doing it and how many of these companies and countries and whatnot are relying upon their keys to Jimmy from it? You know, we gotta rely on Jimmy to make sure that everything stays secure. It's kind of scary. So I think that it kind of scares some people away. So why and how does this instigation, this institutional grade infrastructure you're creating, how does this maybe necessarily work for those Bitcoin Treasuries?
- [53:19]
E
I think it's an excellent question because we are still in the middle. I don't think we're even near the end. We're still in the middle of a massive rotation. Over the last 18 months we've seen long term holders of Bitcoin, especially in the last six months have been selling at very, very elevated levels. And yet the price has, broadly speaking, continued to appreciate. Because while they're selling, institutional professional money managers have been the ones buying right through the ETFs, through Bitcoin treasury companies, through hedge funds and through all of the rest of sort of the institutional world. And we're now at a point where about 6 million BTC or close to 1/3 of the BTC that will ever exist, is managed by these professional money managers. And you're right that they would never trust Jimmy and it to handle millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions in assets. And so one of the reasons that this didn't happen before is a regulatory reason. But the second reason this didn't happen before is that the infrastructure didn't exist. Today there is a large number of parties who provide professional custodial solutions for btc. So that includes things like we were talking about. Coinbase have their institutional custody solution. There's Anchorage, there's Hex Trust, there's Signum Bank Fireblocks. Many, many, many providers of this. Some of them, like Anchorage and Falcon X, are investors in the Bitcoin OS project. Because what we do is we've built the only system in the world which allows these custodians to integrate directly into this and effectively turn all of the funds and all of the wallets that they control into smart contract wallets for Bitcoin and for other types of assets, real world assets that can be issued on the Bitcoin network. And so you now have sort of this confluence for the first time of everything coming together, where you've got the custody solutions, you've got the programmability which is this new piece that Bitcoin OS is bringing, and you have the regulatory environment that allows Bitcoin to become, for btc, a programmable network and then also a programmable network for real world assets, for, for stablecoins and even a system that other chains, Sui, Cardano, Litecoin, whatever, can integrate with, so that BTC and these other real world assets that sort of are canonically issued on Bitcoin can migrate into defi that exists on other chains without having to go through bridges. And so I, I think we finally have all of the pieces in the puzzle that are necessary in order to actually start replacing large chunks of the, the traditional financial world to provide a real alternative. And I think, you know, I think Coinbase's acquisition of Echo that we were discussing earlier is, is in part recognition of the fact that now is the time.
- [57:02]
I
Yeah, it's really exciting. You know, I mean, especially we've seen gold blowing up like it has, and silver over $50. I mean, it's a little bit under it right now, but just because of the nature of it goes up, it goes down. But what you know, I know we're getting ready to wrap this thing up here, but I'm curious because it seems to me that, you know, I look at gold, I'm like, if you have gold in your hand, that's great. But most, most gold is like 500x is paper gold. Right? It's like that or silver is 250 for every 1 ounce of physical. There's like an exponential amount beyond that. That's in paper. That's, that's managed by comics. So if you don't hold your gold, you don't hold your silver. You don't actually hold it. So what is, what's, what's holding back people's minds from, you know, utilizing Bitcoin as, you know, knowing it, that it is as safe and secure as gold, if not more so. Because there's not all this paper gold or paper bitcoin.
- [57:59]
E
Right? Yeah. So I think the primary role that Bitcoin is going to play in the very near future. Right. And, but what I mean is over the next few years is as a complement to gold rather than a replacement to gold. So we're, we're seeing increased interest from central banks, from sovereign wealth funds and basically from everyone. Right. Wealth managers, all the way down to retail to holding a larger part of their holdings in gold. And this is because nobody as, as the, as the, the world is becoming more and more fragmented and more and more volatile, you need neutral assets, not assets which are generated by a specific political group or a specific country. But the problem with gold is that it's basically impossible to settle any trade with gold. Today, for example, there are significant arbitrage opportunities between the cost of gold in Hong Kong and the cost of gold in London. And the way that they close these arbitrage opportunities is they load up Boeing 747s with gold bars and they fly them across Asia. This is, this is not good. It's not good. Asia becomes a more and more volatile environment and it's just generally not good. As Boeing.
- [59:31]
I
Well, they used, they used to try that back in the day with those big armada ships.
- [59:36]
A
Exactly.
- [59:37]
E
And this has always been the problem with, with gold that it is an asset nobody controls, but it's an asset which is extremely impossible to, to move around. And so what I suspect we're going to start seeing is the majority of holdings by at least central bank type actors is still going to remain in gold for probably the, the, the, the, the next half decade. But they're going to increasingly need another similar asset which is BTC in order to provide settlement. And this is where the programmability of Bitcoin becomes absolutely crucial because what you're providing settlement for is futures, derivatives and business deals. And so you need to be able to ideally represent all of that on chain so that the settlement can happen automatically programmatically. And so what we're actually starting to see, and we're already with, within the BUS ecosystem starting to see the first examples of this as people start using Bitcoin osbos for generating contracts programmably with btc, is that we're starting to see the emergence of a new kind of defi, which I think we can call TRADFI or institutional grade defi. Right. Where right now it's primarily OTC contracts. But I think soon we'll start seeing it integrated into lending platforms, DEXs, etc. Where people are utilizing their, their, their BTC as the primary form of collateral for different kinds of derivatives and business deals that can then be settled programmatically and instantaneously across borders.
- [61:33]
I
It's fascinating. There's a big sea change happening folks. And make sure to follow Iago on his twitter account. Also BTCOS, the website is bitcoin os.build and you guys are doing the pre sale for boss right now. You guys are Currently on stage 15 team, what's the final stage? When does that thing become live?
- [61:56]
E
Good sir, tomorrow is the last day that it will be open because the system is about to go live. TGE is about to happen and, and with it we're going to be initializing parts of the system which up until now have been only available to sort of a select few institutional players into a much more global system that anyone can use.
- [62:26]
I
Fomo, you're saying today is the last day? I was unaware of that. I've been watching this thing do its thing. So I like how you said be early to bitcoin again. Bitcoin OS is bringing crypto to Bitcoin with revolutionary ZK tech breakthroughs. First Bitcoin ZK verification and bridgeless token transfers. Man, you guys are doing cool stuff over there and I just kind of love it. The ethereumization kind of of Bitcoin being able to do smart contracts and bring in D5 and all of that. You got any final words of wisdom, good sir? Mr. Yago, to the all the fine listeners who are tuning into this.
- [63:04]
E
Yeah, forget about what's happening in the next tick and think about what's happening over the next five years, because that's where the money gets made.
- [63:12]
I
Ah, very good. Beautiful. Hey, Mr. Dave, are you still with us, good sir?
- [63:19]
G
Here.
- [63:19]
A
I'm just cracking up about Iago showing how. How much of a true gentleman he is. Not. Not responding to your ethereumization, you know, comment. I think that was hysterical. Yeah. What's up, Travis?
- [63:30]
I
No, that's great. So I. I'm really impressed with what. What Yaga's been doing over there. I actually aped in when I first saw it. I was like, wait a second. This thing is good. So good stuff. So any final. Any final thing you want to say, Dave, before we wrap this bad boy up?
- [63:45]
A
No, I think Iago's last piece of advice should be the tagline, zoom out when investing. Trading, different story. But if you're going to invest, zoom out and pick the right trend.
- [63:57]
I
That's great. Not the last tick the next five years. And you guys are early when you think about it. I mean, because if you look at the total market cap of gold and all the market cap and all the debt on the world, now we're just. Just starting to tokenize things. This is an exciting time. So thank you so much for tuning in to our crypto town hall meeting. We do this daily and with the fine hosts that are. That you are familiar with. And so with that, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for tuning.
- [64:34]
B
It.