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- [00:00]
A
Good morning, everybody.
- [00:01]
B
Welcome to Crypto town hall. Every other weekday here on exit 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. And man, what can we possibly talk about? The world is so calm, Dave, you know, hard to find anything.
- [00:14]
C
Yeah, you know, it's like the fact that the markets are doing nothing and we still have a, quote, deadline before massive escalation tomorrow, I mean, is, as I said this morning, Scott, nobody believes anything anymore at this point. I think people are numb to this stuff. You know, it's the only word I can use. It's like, markets are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. You know, it's. Someone use the analogy of the boy who cried wolf. And I think that's accurate. I think that people just hear, hear these, these, see these truth social tweets and they're like, oh, here we go again. And it's. It really is a crazy time to be alive. That's all I could say.
- [00:59]
B
Totally agree. I mean, you know, bitcoin definitely behaving a little honey badger ish right now, but I guess nothing has really dumped on this over the weekend news. I find it really interesting that, you know, S and P is up 69
- [01:12]
C
is Honey Badger ish. And whether we're at like we are now or we are at 65, 66, you know, whatever, we haven't moved out of this three or $4,000 range during this entire, the entire time. I mean, this is really, really, really much more about bitcoin idiosyncratic stuff and the accelerating, quote, debate over quantum and quantum readiness than it is as far as bitcoin is concerned than the macro. The macro. I think people know that there's going to be a wall of money printed one way or another. And bitcoin is an escape valve here. If you believe it and if you don't or you think it's going to fail, well, then you're selling. And I think it really is like that. I almost can't look at it any other way at this point. I mean, we say this every day or every other day, but look what you're seeing all. It doesn't take much. One buyer probably came in over the weekend and bought and kept buying. And today you probably have some STRC buying because we always get that on Monday and there's no one to sell it. So bitcoin is outperforming. Is it out of its range? No, it's still in the same range that it's been in. You can't be blase when bitcoin is trading at 66 and excited when it's trading at 69 and think that there's a difference between the two in the long run. Oh, come on.
- [02:32]
B
Somebody has to totally, totally agree with that. Let's get the panel involved.
- [02:35]
C
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to provoke people. What do we want?
- [02:38]
B
Bitcoin's going to $1,000. Discuss. Come on. Okay, thank you, Jamie.
- [02:45]
D
Hey guys. How you doing? Yeah, so I mean, you know, our space is obviously kind of bleeds over all these others because of our, our long format. And so we're just there so we get to kind of see people from all over other spaces and kind of things that they discuss. I mean, the sentiment that we got that we spent a lot of time in this weekend, obviously, you know, the Trump tweets and try, I think Trump supporters still feeling very confident that he has a plan or things are going to work itself out that, you know, although it seems like maybe madness or you know, not, not really measured responses that somehow this is, this is a way of negotiating the other side of it is, you know, obviously equally divided that, you know, there is no plan to this and that this is going to continue to cause chaos. And so, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about those two ide less about, you know, prices, maybe a little bit about near term opportunities versus long term risk and kind of just talking with people about considering the, the, the, the longer time frame in, in their financial considerations. But some really good discussions between even Iranian Americans. Some people came on and were, were equally passionate about, you know, belief in the Trump and the opportunity for their people and, and equally disappointed about the possibilities about it. So, you know, it's definitely something that I think is continuing to create uncertainty with these tweets and you know, the deadlines we obviously have the 48 hour one, the five day extension one. Here's the newest one, kind of a reminiscent of the tariffs and how they were treated. So we're looking at seeing what's going to happen and kind of tying it into the macro. We have some things coming up with the, obviously the new Fed chair and how that will play into rates and, and printing and also kind of equating it back to how bad this may be within the supply chain that this could cause some type of a Covid style large print. So that's kind of the sentiment to kind of gauge what's going across from at least within the people who's visited our community.
- [05:04]
C
Yeah, I think that's all accurate. The real question is what's the reaction? And, and it always boils down to, and I made this point, I'm going to keep jamming this home because people in markets forget this. Markets move based off of changes in expectations. They don't move based on news if it was already expected. Right. You know, and that is what matters. That's true about everything. And we don't know what's going to take to make right now the average person expects a morass. Right. And you know, but on the other hand they also expect that they're going to do something and that's why oil is elevated. But you know, as Mike McGlone pointed out this morning, I mean December, the December futures for oil has been at 70. Is it 72? I think that's where it's in. Which is elevated for sure. I mean the cost of production is 55. So that's good for oil companies. But it's not at 150. It's not at where Brent just, I mean Brent traded I guess at 140 recently, you know, on the actual physical, you know, to take new delivery, you know. And so yeah, I mean there's a, there's a massive, the expectations are not the same if that, if those December contracts move over 100, the world is a very different place than it is right now. And that will cause revaluation of various assets and that will cause, you know, certainly in our administration doing everything they can to print money. And you're right, the thing you mentioned, the Kevin Warsh thing, the fact that, that Thom Tillis is being such a world class butthead and not letting the confirmation move forward because he wants Trump, the DOJ to drop their suit against the Federal Reserve in order as costs for doing so. I mean it literally is that stupid is potentially going to keep Powell in the seat for six months or longer. I mean maybe forever. I mean, you know, literally there's nothing stopping. Yeah, seriously, we have that screwed up of a political system where if the Senate committee doesn't reflect the, you know, the confirmation, it can get held up. There are some Trump nominees that have been sitting for over 18 months because Thune won't allow recess appointments. I mean, I know that most people don't know about this stuff, but our political system in the United States is bright broken. I mean it's not just that people think Congress are a bunch of, you know, parasitic jackals, which is true by the way. I think that's what the average public opinion is, is somewhere between parasite and evildoer there. It's the belief in them is so low, but it's actually worse than that. It's just completely dysfunctional. So that is a large part of this. I mean, if wars was, if we knew we were gonna have a new Federal Reserve chair in May, which you would think would be known. I don't think, I think markets would be very different and. Because, you know, it just is. But, but there is no faith that we're gonna have a new Federal Reserve chair in May. I mean, it's only a month away and it's still stuck in committee.
- [08:09]
B
Yeah, go ahead, Jamie.
- [08:11]
D
No, I was gonna say. Yeah, I, I think what everything you just said just, just kind of compiles onto the uncertainty like that. That, that's everything that we're, we're looking for some area where. And it's just, it's difficult to find. Right, Dave?
- [08:27]
C
I mean, yeah, who knows, you know, is there gonna be enough helium to produce chips? Right. You know, with whatever. Or are those the ships that, that are going through? Is Iran gonna raise more money from the straits and people are going to continue to pay it or are we just not going to put up with it? Are we going to escalate the war? Because I mean, these are all very real, very, very real things going on right now that the statement that I had before was I think most money managers, not money managers, most speculators on large scale are probably running with less leverage and less capital deployed maybe than ever because they don't want to be caught flat footed on the wrong side of something because something that shifts expectations, happens that they have no control over. Remember, most people like to trade because they believe they have an edge. But if you know nothing about what's going on geopolitically, your edge kind of disappears because it could get washed out. Right.
- [09:26]
E
I think, I think some investors are also feeling like even if there is a new Fed chair in May, the actions that were taken, you know, basically the effect on the largest input on inflation, oil being trading where it is today, have kind of robbed it of its ability to do decrease rates very quickly. So that is, I think that's something that people are paying attention to and just saying like, even if President Trump gets everything that he wants when it comes to the Fed, it may just be, you know, irresponsible to cut rates at, at that point.
- [10:01]
B
Yeah, I mean the DOT plots to your point, don't even have, I think, any cuts now right.
- [10:06]
F
This year.
- [10:07]
B
The environment has just changed massively. And for better or for worse, that's of their own Doing. Right. So you know, the. They I think bullied Powell for so long. Saeed. Right. And made him look like a complete clown. Needs to cut rates. Need to cut rates. And now I don't think rational people think that a rate cut today is the right move. Oh, I don't know. Because of their own action.
- [10:30]
C
I violently disagree with that. But Alex, you had your hand up. So before I say why no it
- [10:36]
G
did, can you please elaborate on that? I would love to hear your contrarian view.
- [10:39]
C
Yeah, the, the. I agree with Moran actually on this one. You know, he is a board of, he is a Fed governor. He's, he's the outlier. Look, you can't. An oil shock creates. Yes, it does create a price rise, there's no doubt. It also is a demand destructor because it is the most important price rise that actually cuts consumer demand, raising rates at it, which literally the only mechanism that rate rises have to do with inflation is by cutting consumer demand and crushing business in order to decrease inflationary expectations, which will be which unions use to say, okay, we need raises. The truth is with AI and with everything going on in the economy and with oil prices going up, it actually cuts economic growth. It cuts to aggregate demand and so it doesn't cause wage push inflation. In fact, if you look at the 70s, the 70s, the oil shocks, it was years after the oil shock, the oil shocks that inflation took off. And it took off because of easy money policies in reaction to the oil shock. And then in 79 when Iran went totalitarian Islamist, there was a smaller oil shock because they weren't as big a producer at the time. But that ended, it ended pretty quickly because the whole reason that the Iranian revolution was successful was because the oil workers were pressured and joined Khomeini. You know, people don't know this but you know, I was, I was studying economics at the time, so I'm very aware of this. Volcker came in two years later. Well, he came in that direct about a year later and he really started ratcheting it up a year after that. And it was in response to a endemic cycle of union demands. And the unions were much more powerful back then and they had built every union, had COLAs put built into their contract, cost of living adjustments and there was this massive easy money before it. And all of that was what caused inflation to get embedded in the economy. The oil shock itself had petered out. I mean 73, 74, 75, when the oil shock was really working it through, inflation wasn't there. It started taking off after the effect, after the economy started to rebound from those low levels. So it's a very different situation. I would say that you can't look at the fact that the Fed is operating on that model. Doesn't surprise me, given the fact that I'm not sure that all their PhDs are better than monkeys throwing darts at understanding where the economy is going. But the truth is that they suck. And their record of prediction is as bad as it's actually staggering that we spend billions of dollars for this and we give them so much power.
- [13:18]
B
Yeah. I think at the end of the day, the reason I said it is because there's so much uncertainty. How can the Fed be confident in doing anything in either direction?
- [13:28]
C
Well, they can't, except for when aggregate demand gets destroyed. I mean, aggregate demand is not responding right now to what's going on in the United States. It's not responding right now. It won't respond until you start seeing the prices, gas prices starting really to take off in places other than California. Right. You know, when gas prices start going up, people start, we're going into the summer driving season just now. If gas prices are four or five dollars a barrel across the way. Dollars a gallon across the, across the United States. Yeah. You're going to see massively less travel. It's going to affect the economy and it will be bad.
- [14:01]
B
I paid 588 yesterday in Tampa.
- [14:04]
E
Yeah. Florida's high right now.
- [14:06]
C
Yeah, I, I, I drive a test. I don't, I don't notice it as much. I do look around.
- [14:11]
B
Yeah. I generally don't. And then I looked up and I was like, this pump's going really slow. Why? And then I was at 125 bucks.
- [14:18]
C
If it's there in a month, there's going to be mass. You're going to start seeing it affect the economic numbers big time. And it's going to look recessionary. Like really recessionary. That's not an environment where you're hiking rates. I'm sorry, that's not an environment where unions are demanded more wages. Anyway. Alex, you have your hand up.
- [14:38]
G
No, I think it's possible that Kevin Warsh does decrease rates this year, but as you all know, he's not a fan of qe. And the ultimate formula is QE plus reducing the rates. Right. To have some sort of defi bubble like we had.
- [14:52]
B
I think that's all gaslighting. Alex, I'm not sorry to interrupt you, but I think that there's a Kevin Warsh is a hawk narrative that makes him a very easy pick that many people will accept. But I think he's going to do exactly what Trump wants him to do, whatever that is. So I think there's a very likely chance that things he said in the past are not highly relevant to his actions in the future. And it makes a lot of sense to me rationally why they would present him as this hawkish person so he doesn't look like he is exactly what he is.
- [15:24]
G
And it's a really good point, Scott, because most of the footage that people are showing are kind of recycling. It's 2020, 2021 footage, maybe 2022, but it's not recent footage. So I think it's great that you're skeptical on that standpoint. Well, let's hope he does both QE and decrease rates. And that being said, I just wanted to share a little bit of optimism and I know a lot of people out here are probably skeptical and feel some fear. I know, I know, Dave, you're more optimistic and I just wanted to share that. You know, I've been following obviously bitcoin and the total cap 3's behavior since the beginning of the war. And I must say that if you compare it with S&P 500, if you compare it with the Nasdaq, if you compare it with the Russell 2000, not only prior to the war, we hit the lowest fear and greed index scoring in the history of crypto in early February, as you all remember. But on top of that, it really feels very positive to see that every single asset is down besides oil and bitcoin and the total cap 3. So even gold is down. Obviously, gold had a really nice rally prior to this, but bitcoin and crypto is behaving extremely, extremely well compared to the other assets. It's roughly between 3 to 4% if you count the first day of war all the way until today. So I think those are really two really good indicators that the future is bright. And also, even if we do not have Fed rates being cut, I think it's very likely based on the tech cycle. And I would encourage a lot of you guys to check out Carlotta Perez. She's probably one of the most profound writers on tech cycles and channelized the dot com bubble. She's done multiple hypothesis and thesis is around it. We're really reaching. We're going through the growth and maturity stages of the tech cycle. And what does that mean? It means that regardless if crypto total market capitalization doesn't grow, we will have a shakeout and we're already having shakeouts and there are some companies that will actually grow substantially and investments will be ROI will be asymmetrical based on who has the real case study, who has the real application that is really changing our lives from every single day. And for example, obviously we want the Clarity act to go through and give the legitimacy to the stable coins because that will be once again, the regulatory approval is also directly connected to technologies that go from the growth stage to the maturity stages. There's also one more thing to remember, guys. When bitcoin pumped from late 2024, Q1, 2025 and a lot of assets did pump, I call it a fundamental season. I was trying to correct everyone and say this is not the altcoin season. It's a fundamental season with people, investors that are a lot more mature. It's less of a tech frenzy and people are looking for real case studies. Even though maybe some valuations may be blown out of proportion, a lot of them rallied and did extremely well regardless of if the Fed rates go down once again. One more thing, and there are a lot of doomsday guys saying that bitcoin is going to drop to 40k, which still I really don't believe this is going to happen. I mean, we could have like that one candle like we had in the COVID crash where maybe bitcoin goes down to 50k. But we have to remember that from the previous cycle all time high to the current cycle, all time high, Bitcoin has only doubled in its valuation and that is extremely low because the prior cycles it was 3.5x. So how could you measure and saying, oh, in the previous cycle bitcoin crashed 70% so it should do the same thing today. I think that thesis to be. It's such a retarded thesis because it's not relative to the upside. You know, if you want to calculate downside, you have to look at cycle to cycle. All time low to all time high, all time high to all time high, and all time low to all time low. And I think only by having this type of relativity you can start calling the shots. But yeah, once again, guys, I'm always overly optimistic, so you need to really be skeptical on what I say.
- [19:18]
B
I agree. Well, I agree with you. Yeah, I think that people were screaming that from the mountaintops at 120, but it's more important to say it when we're here at 69 or 70. Right. So I agree that people shouldn't lose sight that that was something that seemed much more obvious. Near a top right. I think 55% I don't know what our total top to bottom is. 55 ish 58 at this point percent certainly enough for a cycle that didn't even 2x its all time previous all time high.
- [19:50]
C
I mean Scott, I mean I made the point this morning and people have been yelling at me but I think that it would have been even shallower. I think that the natural fall for this cycle after the deleveraging event on 1010 was 80s was high. 80s low 90s. Yeah. Yep, yep. And I think Quantum is why we, we fell the rest of the way. And frankly you know that the math on that is actually eerily. I mean it's eerily similar to what you would expect. And if you believe as I do that quantum will get resolved that it is solvable, it's a fixable problem and as long as as it doesn't get ignored and gets treated like you know, in the same vein as we treat whether or not wizard hat types should be able to put on the bitcoin blockchain or not that if you believe in economic rationality and you think it's going to get fixed then buckle up. Because I think a large part of
- [20:50]
B
what's gone on anyway Dan, I thought I saw Dan and then Saeed so. Dan and Saeed.
- [20:55]
E
Yeah, I have end up I think what I wanted to comment on the reduced volatility, it could be a function of. This is something that we thought about before institutions joining and the ETF that's
- [21:10]
C
going to take volatility out both ways.
- [21:13]
E
That was always going to happen as you get these larger, more sophisticated actors coming in. They sell when it goes up and they buy when it goes down as they rebalance their portfolios and things like that. So reduced volatility has been ongoing since bitcoin started. That's perhaps why we saw a lower upside and now hopefully a lower downside.
- [21:35]
B
Saeed.
- [21:37]
E
Yeah, I mean I, I don't know what's going to happen with Bitcoin but I'll tell you what I'm interested in seeing. It feels like the price action is, is the, is reflecting the uncertainty. But I guess what I want to see is, is what we've been talking about for a long time which is an uncorrelated asset to the market. Right. Which is the ultimate kind of safe haven asset or inflation resistant asset which we have not seen at all in, in, in Bitcoin. But, but we know that's the long term promise. So I, I, I look at the Price action now. And, and I kind of feel like maybe this is what it looks like to kind of move away from a highly correlated asset. You know, following, you know, pretty much everything is very correlated right now. Right. So I think there's a tremendous amount of hunger from, from investors who are looking for uncorrelated bets, especially ones as like, you know, important as Bitcoin. Like something as, as fundamental as Bitcoin.
- [22:45]
A
Right.
- [22:45]
E
Like, I, I think that's the opportunity that, that it has if bitcoin trades the way that gold has traded over the last two years with, although there may be a rising market, you know, people are still making the bet that, hey, like, this is something that I want to hold and I want to hold for these specific reasons. And I think people are making that bet every day. Right. I think if you, if you look at, in this, you know, pretty crazy environment, you, you're seeing buyers and you're also seeing sellers. Right? But it's not really, no one's picking a direction, not substantially. So that would be my optimistic thesis would be like, to start to kind of realize that this is what it looks like when bitcoin decouples from a risk on just interest rates being down and QE happening to an asset that the entire world says, hey, the world's going crazy right now. This asset is something that is actually really, you know, uncorrelated. I want to be in. So,
- [23:46]
B
yeah, I think. Okay, well, I don't want to jump in. David, were you jumping in and then. Matt?
- [23:51]
F
Yeah, I was just going to make an observation with respect to Kevin Warsh to kind of take us back a little bit in the conversation. Warsh is basically a proponent of, you know, cutting the size of the Fed's balance sheet, which obviously is still rather large. So I'm setting up a situation here where on the one hand, as you run off the balance sheet, obviously that's going to have an impact on arguably raising market interest rates. At the same time, if he does follow this imprimatur from Trump to be cutting interest rates, then the market's question about the independence of the Fed comes into play, which arguably would again lead to higher interest rates. What does this all mean for crypto and what does this mean for Bitcoin? It means we're going into an environment of less liquidity, not more. And, you know, to that extent, you know, we might see tactical trading here around what's going on in the Persian Gulf. But I think until such as. I think that as long as we are in a Tightening liquidity regime. It's going to be tough to make headway to the upside.
- [24:57]
B
Matt?
- [25:00]
H
Yeah. Great conversation this morning. I see some friends in here I like and I know one thing I just kind of want to bring it back is, you know, we're talking about the conflict in the Middle east here. I've got my eye on this is that Congress, not the President, really holds the core, the core war power card if you think about it, because under the War Powers Resolution, the president can initiate right. Military action, but he's got like 60 days, possibly 90 for a withdrawal. So I'm kind of watching that because then after that 90 days, Congress has to authorize that. The other thing that I've kind of got my eye on as well is the bank of Japan. They're looking again to meet here guys by the end of April and there's already talk that they're looking about raising their rates again. I think as a lot of the smart minds in this room know, have already discussed the Japan carry trade that starts to unwind here by the end of April. That could be potentially a big deal. But I think the biggest story that I think that's gone under the radar that is worth talking about is Microsoft. Recently they joined Chevron in engine number one for a power plant to produce over 2,500 megawatts in Texas, all off natural gas. This is big. When we're seeing big oil and big tech come together. I think we're going to continue to see more of this kind of adoption through some of these big hyperscalers in ways because energy really is the bottleneck and it's going to continue to get worse I think as the days, weeks and months go on.
- [26:21]
E
Ajit.
- [26:24]
A
So hi, I'm logged in from Dubai. In fact I'm looking at Palm Jumeirah right now from a tall building. And I must tell you that regardless of what a coin market cap or similar website will show you as volumes, my perception on the street of Dubai is that the volumes have actually disappeared. For example, some of you may know that the United Arab Emirates currency Dirhams is pegged to the dollar. So $1 is 3.672 something dirhams and really the day to day variation only happens at the fourth decimal place. But today in the market for the first time, I noticed that the buying rate of USDT as well as the selling rate of USDT was higher than the conversion rate. In a market which has zero income tax and no capital controls or practically no capital controls, it's an extremely Rare occurrence which shows you that lot of traders or people who would buy and sell USDT have disappeared and the market has got lopsided because usually there is a bid ask spread around the price of usdt. I think that if this is happening in usdt, and I literally encountered this firsthand today myself in Dubai, I have to believe that even in other digital assets, many of which are less liquid than usdt, we should encounter even similar things as a result. Yes, liquidity is currently the concern, which can cause price swings to be more pronounced.
- [27:54]
C
Yeah, Scott, you quoted a stat this morning which I think is relevant here, which is retail selling while everybody else buying, that's just in bitcoin, but that retail selling is there isn't the everybody else buying in altcoins nearly as much. And so volumes are depressed and there's no doubt that the entire market. And look, Ajit, obviously there's been a fairly large exodus of expats from the uae. The UAE is at more risk in terms of their currency pegged to the dollar, a lot of their reserves, things in gold, Bitcoin, etc. There are people who think that they're selling, coming from, emanating from there, or risks that they'll be forced to. And so all of that is true. So there's a lot of cross currents that go on over this war. You're sort of at the epicenter of it. And I'm curious what you think about that.
- [28:50]
A
No, you're absolutely right because the source of USDT also comes from the gold business because Dubai is one of the largest gold markets in the world to trading gold trading markets. And a lot of it comes from Africa, which gets bought in usdt. And then even, you know, today people are buying property. Like I had to pay an installment for a property I paid today. 25k was my quarterly installment. I paid it on my Etherfi card. So USDT is being used quite a lot. And the fact that such a liquid asset, because of war, because of the exodus of expats and a whole host of other reasons itself, is demonstrating a rather illogical market position where the bid ask spread is actually there, but on only one side of the price, not on both sides, tells me that. Yeah. So you should know Dubai is a very, very large market for these sort of assets. And if you're encountering that here, there is going to be effect elsewhere.
- [29:49]
C
Yeah. So I mean, if people forget 2008, but the most important point of 2008, I'll never forget this because a friend of mine is an Emerging market bond manager and long before, two or three months before markets really started to pinwheel down, he was telling me how assets were seized up, right. How you just couldn't trade. It's not that they were dropping but that there was nothing going on. Now I'm not saying assets are going to drop. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that when you before PR, before you get very large volatile movements, often market sees up first and it doesn't necessarily mean down. It could just the same thing happens with up by the way. So it's both ways. But yeah, when you're starting to see markets seize up, that is an indication that there is going to be a big move. Which direction or not is. Well, it depends, depends on the news flow, doesn't it? Anyway, I, I don't know who was first, but I see Saeed and Matt's hand up also.
- [30:54]
E
Yeah, I can go. I was just going to say that it's interesting that you kind of bring up the, the Emirati Dirham that is, is pegged to the dollar. You know, there's a bunch of currencies in the, in the GCC that are pegged to the dollar. They're mainly that way because they sell oil and dollars so their largest export makes sense for them to peg against the dollar. I'm, I'm curious to see how that plays out, you know, as a result of, of this war. And a lot of people have kind of reported on this being a catalyst for de dollarization. We see the Iranians every day pushing for fuel export paid in euros, paid in yawn, paid in other currencies other than the dollar. I think why that's interesting, it goes back to that, that point that Dave made where he said basically, you know, inflation also destroys demand because people can't afford to buy stuff. And then AI is naturally deflationary because it's supposed to over time bring in a lot of productivity gains into the economy. So you know, that may be true. You know, those are certainly factors that you have to consider when you're trying to see what's to happen over the next six months or, or, or a year. But dollarization, the peg, you know, seeing more demand for USDT or, or, or less demand or you know, as a was was kind of describing seeing what this war has done in terms of forcing countries, even allies to not trade in dollars for, for energy inputs. Even the bank of Japan raising rates. Right. And, and the carry, carry trade continuing to, to kind of unwind all of these things. Are gonna, you know, if they all happen at, you know, over the next six months or a year, and this new reordering of, of, of the world takes place in the, in the wrong way. America, America's buying or borrowing power can be affected. We, we kind of have this, we take for granted this, this, this last 50, 50 years or, or 70 years of, hey, as long as you bring interest rates down, you can, you can borrow as much money as you want. You know that, that may not be the case in 10 years or five years or one year if the world decides to reorganize in a different way. So all, all of these points are just really interesting to, to think about. I'm not predicting that that's going to happen. I'm just saying that we are seeing things that we had not seen before. And I'm wondering how that kind of plays out.
- [33:32]
C
I think that's. Yeah, I mean, the reordering of the world order is away from the dollar. It's fascinating because Maglone always points out, and it's true that the US treasuries are what, over 200 some odd basis points higher than the Chinese rates, yet China has a larger deficit than we do, et cetera. And the reason is generally because the US Is the dollar's the reserve currency. If we were to lose that, there would be negative effects for certain in terms of affordability inside the United States. But you want us to ask yourself the question, what would happen to US long rates? And so there's definitely some cross currents there. Ajit, is that an old hand or a, or a new one?
- [34:21]
A
I'm so sorry. I'm doing a phone call simultaneously. I heard my name, but I didn't hear.
- [34:25]
C
No, I, I see your hand up. I was just wondering if it was old or new because.
- [34:29]
A
No, no, my hand is not up. My hand is not up. It's a glitch.
- [34:31]
C
Sorry. They were in the glitch. So, Saeed, since you're here, Scott, is it okay for me to pivot and ask a question? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So obviously, you know, this is crypto town hall and we keep talking about oil, we keep talking about war, we keep talking about Trump, but we had a really important event happen with the Drift protocol being hacked. And there was a post this morning from, I think it was UDI talking about Quantum and how the real risk is to pretty much every smart contract and defi protocol because of the ability to determine from public keys to find private keys. I'm just curious because you live in the Defi world? I mean, is there quantum resistant defi? Are people really worried? Do you think that the fact that these hacks continue to happen are continuing to undermine confidence, or do you think that a new wave of defi is coming in, which will be fine for all this because the core technology makes a lot of sense, but these risks seem to be amplified. I was just curious what you thought.
- [35:38]
E
Yeah, I think it's, you know, it. I think a lot of that work needs to be done on the blockchain level in order for it to, to kind of make sense. I don't think it's on the protocol level. So the Defi projects themselves, they can add things in to be quantum resistant, but it will significantly slow down and, and make their operations and their technology much more complex. So it's, it really, it's a base layer issue in my opinion. Although there are solutions for the, on the protocol level as well. So for me it's really, if you're making a bet, you really want to make a bet on blockchains that have the ability to change their signing signature scheme. Right? That's really what the issue is.
- [36:25]
C
Dumb down the audience contrast. The main level one, Bitcoin is very
- [36:31]
E
hard to change, as everyone knows.
- [36:32]
C
We understand Bitcoin, but I was talking about it within DeFi, so within D5.
- [36:37]
E
So the two, the two largest centers for D5 are Ethereum and Solana. Ethereum has been very slow to, you know, to, to, to launch upgrades to their protocol. Traditionally speaking, Solana has been relatively fast. So if I were to pick a horse in the race, I would say that Solana will be quantum resistant far sooner than Ethereum is. It's, it's, it's. The implementation of the technology is, is a new, is a new thing, but the technology itself is not right. The, the, it's, it's, it's the, the, the signing scheme that needs to change. So like you need to just change the way that you were signing transactions with a different basically scheme and then you, you have quantum resistance. It's not an easy, it's a big lift to, to change a, a core component of the blockchain. But it can be done. We know that it can be done. For me, it's really just kind of seeing when will it get done?
- [37:36]
C
Will it.
- [37:36]
E
You know, the Google paper basically said if this is not done by 2029, then there are some serious implications to crypto. I think it will be done a lot, a lot faster than that. So I'm not particularly worried and my Prediction is that Solana does it first.
- [37:54]
C
Okay, well, I think that's important. I see. You know, someone immediately tweeted out a comment that Algorand and I'm sure there are a bunch of other layer ones who are going to do a better job there. The question.
- [38:05]
B
Yeah, Algorand flew when the quantum paper came out from Google, by the way.
- [38:09]
C
Yeah. For that reason.
- [38:11]
E
Because, yeah, yeah, Algorand's got it, but they don't have defi. So that's, that's the only issue. We need, we need, like, we need defi. We need, we need traders there. We need serious volumes. We need assets and things like that. Algorand's great. Algorand's great. Let's see if they can build it.
- [38:27]
C
And they will come, right?
- [38:29]
E
Yeah, No, I mean, they're in pole position, honestly. If they can leverage the ability to talk to the market in that way and attract the protocol builders and then ultimately the traders, investors and users of the blockchain, then they'll be extremely successful.
- [38:47]
G
You know what this says to me, like, Dave, because when you think about the issue of Drift Protocol, right, which is essentially admin keys, and for those who don't understand what the admin keys are, it literally gives you access to the entire protocol. And the problem with admin keys is even once you've locked in an upgrade, it's upgradable. So every time you upgrade the smart contract, there are potential flaws and vulnerabilities happening into this. And I think, Dave, when you're comparing what Drift Protocol did in hyperliquid, you actually can see, and you probably recall from last year when there was an attack on hyperliquid and they were trying to long, short one of their tokens, a meme coin, and mess up with the actual protocol, they managed to freeze and actually freeze the assets and make sure that no one lost their funds. And so then the question arises of, you know, what things should be truly decentralized and trustless versus what things do need centralization. Right. And I think a lot of people are starting to realize, especially people who are completely decentralized, Maxis will realize that it doesn't really work. There are some components that need to be trustless, some components that need to have some sort of trusted system. And, you know, because right now if we take a look at some trusted protocols, you know, if you look at tornado cash or we look at Uniswap, I mean, Uniswap is still working on upgrades, but the innovation is actually quite slow relative to the protocols. That are not trying to have like a purely trustless and immutable system. And so that really brings the debate of what is the fine line? What do we need obviously for the perps. Dexs, this is great for hyper liquid because Drift protocol was one of the majors on Solana, top three in terms of volume. And hyperliquid has been constantly eating, eating market share, I mean year on year they're double. They have 6% of all market share. And that includes centralized exchanges. And they're the absolute kings when it comes to, on chain. I wouldn't call them decentralized. I would say like on chain, non custodial, perpetual exchange. So yeah, anyways, just rising. That is a question. I don't know if anyone wants to comment that this could be an interesting angle to discuss because you brought up Drift protocol.
- [40:56]
E
Yeah, I would say for the drift hack, like for us in the industry, the, the craziest part about it was that this was the first time that we saw North Koreans use intermediaries to socially engineer a hack. This was not a code hack. This was not a bug in the code that, you know, somebody, somebody found and exploited. This was, you know, allegedly and on good authority that it was a known North Korean hacking group, very sophisticated, considered to be state sponsored, using real people at real conferences with real backgrounds, real profiles, real work history. Even if you vetted them, you would think that they were legitimate and using them to kind of infiltrate an organization and then ultimately trick them into signing their admin keys over. So you know, this, this wasn't a crypto specific thing. This could happen to a bank, you know, but it was very, you know, the industry is kind of. All the conversations that I've had over the past week have been around. How do you mitigate this? How do you make sure that. Because ultimately when you're building open, open source technology, you're talking to a lot of people that you want to use it and build on it and you're showing them how the code works and how the systems operate and stuff like that. Now you have to really kind of understand like who am I speaking to? It's very common in this industry. You know, at least once a week somebody at my company does an interview and catches that this is not a real person. This is someone who is, who is using AI to, to cover their face or whatever and has to disconnect from the interview. So they're constantly interviewing for jobs at crypto companies, these types of hacking networks. But this is the first time that we've seen Them kind of approach it in a very, very different route. So that's kind of the big story for me is how do you shore up your systems, your operations and educate your staff to be able to identify this thing and not actually allow the ability for, for someone to infiltrate an organization and have that kind of control over user funds.
- [43:16]
C
The thing that comes to mind is there's the debate, that's the constant debate in Bitcoin spaces about not your keys, not your coins, and the various maxis yelling religiously that they can't believe people would own Bitcoin but not hold it at all or a large percentage in self custody, as long as self custody and as long as, and extend this to DeFi. As long as the average human being doesn't trust that their funds are 100% safe. And I mean 100%, I don't mean 95, I mean 100. It is limiting the adoption to a much more technologically sophisticated audience. And I assume that that's a major part of what you deal with on a daily basis and we're where you want to go. But I mean, I think that matters for all of crypto. Right? I mean, it is a big deal. I mean, Bitcoin has, you know, there's ETFs if you want to own it, but it's, it's, it's use case is literally to own the asset. It is not in order to, you know, people aren't using Bitcoin for its network to do its high rate of transfer. Right. You know, it's not using it to open up competition for yield or other things. And which is what defi is. So it is, it does matter. Right? Right. I mean, confidence is really the key thing here. I don't know.
- [44:33]
E
Yeah.
- [44:33]
C
I don't know how you look at it, but that's how I look at it.
- [44:37]
E
I look at it exactly the same way. I think it's a noble kind of axiom. Not your keys, not your coins. It's true. That kind of freedom and control over your financial assets and your financial future is very important and will always be a part of crypto. But you know, I could, I could use the same kind of language talking to someone on the street and say, if it's not cash under your mattress, you know, it's not your cash. Right. Ultimately, like most people don't want to take on the personal responsibility and risk of storing and protecting and all that stuff for any, for most of their assets. So as an industry, you have to have a bunch of different solutions. If you do, you know, as you said, Dave, want to reach critical mass and global adoption, which we have been doing. Right. People are doing more on chain today than they were last year, than they were 10 years ago. That trend will continue. And so I don't think there's really a battle there. It's really just a matter of preferences. You're always going to have the people who are like, hey, I'm sophisticated enough to put. Protect my, my wealth my. By myself, either in my house or on. On. On the blockchain. And then you're going to have the other people are going to say, like, why, as a business I can't do that and as an individual, I don't want to do that. So you have to make sure you're building products for both.
- [46:06]
B
I think we might have lost. Oh, Dave's requesting one second.
- [46:09]
C
Let me try to get him back on stage.
- [46:12]
B
David back.
- [46:14]
A
Okay, I love you back.
- [46:21]
C
Yeah, I think that's that. Look, confidence matters, you know, and obviously it's really hard to be incredibly confident about any asset when you know what's going on now is going on. And I don't know what else to say. I mean, tomorrow it'll be interesting to. Does anyone know when the. Is that the quote, this latest deadline,
- [46:43]
B
is it before we power plants and bridges sometime tomorrow?
- [46:48]
C
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, whatever it is, I mean, it's kind of. It's almost become a joke. I mean, the fact that we're talking about such an incredible impact on human lives hanging in the balance, and the markets are basically yawning saying, yeah, okay, whatever, is weird. I mean, every time I think that maybe we are actually living in a simulation, I get lots and lots of data to say that's true.
- [47:12]
B
Yeah, that was my default. It has to be a simulation. Yesterday's truth from Trump could not have been real.
- [47:19]
D
They're saying around 1:00pm, Dave. Yeah.
- [47:25]
C
By the time we talk on Wednesday when we're back, then we'll. We'll see yet another, you know, red line written in the sand, you know, or, you know, major, you know, major breakthroughs. I mean, who hell knows? I mean, as I said, we don't know what's going on. I'll continue to say that.
- [47:41]
B
Right. But I think, you know, you've seen the Global Uncertainty Index chart that everybody's pushing around. That makes Covid now look like a little blip. Right. And I think it speaks to exactly what you said, which is why would anything move massively? Any asset that's not, you know, Directly affected like oil or something. But anything else, why would it move massively in either direction in a situation with peak uncertainty?
- [48:06]
C
Well, I mean Scott, I think, and
- [48:07]
B
I think people who have sold have sold. That's the reason, like a lot of people will sell when there's massive uncertainty. But my argument has been that most of the big sellers have sold. And Dave alluded to the chart I brought up earlier which showed 65,000 bitcoin had been sold by individuals in the first quarter. But 69,000 had bought by institutions, another 3,000 by ETFs, another, I don't know, it was like 20 ish thousand by governments or something. So it's not that people aren't selling, it's just that as usual in a situation like this, you have retail and weak hands with low convictions selling to stronger hands with longer time frame.
- [48:44]
C
We'll say as usual because that is extreme. That literally is exactly what you see in bottom drink processes during the bottoms form. That's what you see. That doesn't mean that it's the pico bottom, it means that that's what you see. I mean look, I think that 60 was the bottom barring a major geopolitical catastrophe. But you know, but this is the corroborating evidence. The thing that's really interesting is ask yourself how many people are calling for all time highs now without putting a caveat, but I could see it going down to the the 50s. But I mean I don't see any unfiltered bullishness. I see lots of unfiltered bearishness. And to me that's really good. If it flips the other way, if I start seeing a lot of unfiltered bullishness, okay. At that point I'm like, you know, I don't want to be, I don't want everyone to it. And it boils down to what I said before. Remember markets move when expectations change, not when the facts change. And right now the expectation is lower first by pretty much everybody except for people like me. I mean, you know, so I, I'm probably an idiot. But then again I'm used to being called an idiot, so that's okay. You know, I've been married for 36 years.
- [49:59]
H
No, Dave, I'm, I'm the biggest idiot on the app. You can look at my post, my track record. I think I pretty much have locked that spot down. It's the biggest idiot on X. I just want to come back and be really bullish here. One second guys. Nisha Serdenon. I think you guys know her, she's the head of the Citi Digital assets over there. Remember back at strategy, she's talking about, she gave that big presentation making Bitcoin bankable. Brian Moynihan over at B of A again on CNBC at Davos talking about how they have custody solutions. They're all ready for all this stuff. So when I see all these big bank people saying how they have solutions for custody and all of this stuff ready to me, I'm of the mindset that we are going to get this Clarity act passed. They know that this is probably gonna get passed. And like what David Sack said before he left way back in Davos, he said the compromise is gonna be that nobody gets what they want. But what we'll get a deal. Whether it's a good deal or not, we will get a deal. And that we're going to see these banks offer custody, offer solutions, offer lending from bank of America to Citi to Wells to JP Morgan. So I think that this is still the great, great opportunity to accumulate as many sats as possible and put that into self custody. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Scott, you're way closer to this. Tell me why I might be wrong on this clarity and why might not get done.
- [51:15]
B
Well, I think you were, you were right generally. But you have to account for the fact that we accidentally had two government shutdowns in a war in that time.
- [51:26]
C
Accidentally.
- [51:28]
E
Oops.
- [51:30]
B
I mean, like why Nothing's yet nothing's getting passed while we're doing all this.
- [51:36]
C
I think you were right, Matt, before. I mean, you know, look, Congress is going to pass. Not nothing. They've become completely dysfunctional. Like completely right. You know, I don't know what it would take to get Congress to actually do anything meaningful. And I mean anything. You know, it's because look, we're soon if we go another month. So if it doesn't happen in May, it's done. Because they all. Look, Congress people spend most of their time. I wouldn't say campaign. They leave, they leave, they spend most of their time. It's over money. Yeah, they leave. I mean they barely work. They spend their time raising money and campaigning and that's exactly what you're going to see in the summer. So if you don't get it done in May, it's not getting done. Which is why, I guess. What are the odds right now, Scott? They're certainly. They're less than 50.
- [52:22]
B
I haven't, I haven't looked. But whatever they are, they're overblown, over optimistic from anything I'm hearing.
- [52:29]
C
But I don't think it matters for bitcoin. I think it matters a lot. Lot for crypto startups, I think it matters a lot.
- [52:36]
B
Probably helps bitcoin.
- [52:38]
C
Yeah, it probably does, yeah. It certainly, well, doesn't help it. What Matt brought out is the big thing, Bitcoin becoming. I care more about what happens in the Basel Committee than I do Clarity act for Bitcoin. Because bitcoin being you being viewed as an asset, that can be value, it's. Its risk could be valued based on its volatility and liquidity would allow for significant players to enter the market. That's a very big deal. I don't think people under. I think that is massively underestimated by people in the market to know what that could actually do. But the Clarity Act, I mean, yeah, there's some companies, but it really is all about the uncertainty around issuing tokens and what token economics can be. I mean, it matters. Clarity matters. An absolute metric shit ton for Ondo and Link, who could, if in fact it passes, be able to say this is the percentage of revenues that are going to go to holders and now they won't do it because of the legal risk. That to me is the bigger deal. And I picked on those two because they're two projects that look to have really good fundamentals, but you still have a absolute, no, no effing clue what the token holder gets out of it. And so resolving that, I think is a very big deal. And it's a big deal for a lot of startups and a lot of companies that are operating in the space, their equity, not necessarily the token values. I mean, we'll see. But, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's why I think the crypto market, the altcoin market has been where it's been. Right. Never forget, Meme Coins were effectively created by Gary Gensler. I know no one wants to think about it that way. They weren't created, but they were spurred by Gensler because he essentially said all speculative capital, that's where it can go until I think it's safe. Well, you know, that needs to be undone and, and the, the CFTC and SEC are working on that, but they haven't done anything yet, so I guess we'll see. Anyway, Scott, any other topics to talk about?
- [54:37]
B
I think we're, we're right at time and I gotta run, so I pushed myself over here, so appreciate the conversation. It was great. And yet we'll be back on Wednesday and, you know, we'll. We'll sign on if the world exists. And if we don't make it, it's because, you know, it's all over. And bitcoins. Bitcoins at zero. And Mike McGlone was too bullish at 10. If you can't laugh right now, you know, in the face of everything that's happening, what can you do? We will see you guys on Wednesday
- [55:13]
C
if those people want to hear Mike get angry. He actually got mad at me today.
- [55:16]
B
Yeah, he was mad. He was mad. He doesn't like being called dumb.
- [55:20]
C
I didn't call him dumb. I said bathroom. Yeah, he was, anyway.
- [55:24]
H
Wrong.
- [55:24]
B
That's right. I mean, he did call him. He did call himself Mick Retard on the show. So, you know, you can only push as far as someone's willing to push themselves. All right, guys, we gotta run. We'll see you on Wednesday. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, everybody.
- [55:37]
C
Bye.