← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
HUGE Win For Bitcoin: US Government Turns Team Crypto
00:46:25
HUGE Win For Bitcoin: US Government Turns Team Crypto
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- [00:00]
Scott Melker
Team America continues to add pro bitcoin and pro crypto people to the government and I am here for it. Brian Quinten is likely to lead the cftc. Obviously was already pro crypto when he was there last time. Went to Andreessen Horowitz as an advisor and looks like he's going to be coming back which means that he will be in charge of derivatives trading. And we have Tulsi Gabbard coming in as well, a long spoken advocate of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, anti CBDC and of course a ethereum and litecoin holder from the top of the last cycle. We have so much to talk about today with Yago and my friend Bill Barheit from Abra. Let's go. Let's do what is up everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. Saying that at the beginning of every show has become really annoying. It's like a awkward disclaimer and I think I'm going to change it. We'll see. Keep you guys on your toes. Gonna go ahead and bring on Iago now in the afternoon for you and Bill in the very early morning for you. We always love that our west coast hosts guests show up for us at 6:00am Man. Thank you.
- [01:32]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, it's Scott's torture program. 6:00am Bright and early. Very good. Still dark outside. Just to be clear.
- [01:39]
Scott Melker
It's, it's, it's my version of Guantanamo. So thank you for joining. Anyways, we've got some, let's start with actually some macro first. We have the Fed obviously in a bind. I would say is fair to say considering we had hot CPI numbers yesterday and today continuing with hot PPI numbers breaking January PPI inflation unexpectedly rises to 3.5% above expectations of 3.2. Core PPI inflation was 3.6 above expectations of 3.3. PPI inflation is now at its highest since February 23, 2023, while CPI jumped 0.5% month over month. The Fed pivot is over. So these are actually pretty big jumps. You know, usually you get like 0.1% over below. These are a little, little more sizable. I guess there's a few things to unpack here. Bill, should we believe the data at all? Because it's so lagging and complex how they do it and is this a issue?
- [02:39]
Bill Barheit
So, so look for, for purpose of this discussion, it's probably easier to just give them the benefit of the doubt. But within that you have to understand the components and how the components relate to each other. Right. So the, the, the biggest contributors to CPI are housing or I should say to inflation. The biggest contributors to inflation within the CPI are housing, automotive, mostly used cars and car insurance. Now housing, which is by far the biggest Component is a 12 month trailing indicator and they don't have a, a better way to do that in terms of reporting its contribution to inflation just given the complex complexity of it and how people's renter sets, resets, you know, and you know, whatever. So the bottom line is, is that if you actually look at real time inflation, right, it is much, much lower because the impact of housing is actually been somewhat muted, muted the last few months and, and certainly recently now we don't know the impact of the LA fires yet. It will probably be a, a couple of basis points, but not, you know, a jump from let's say 3.5 to 3.6 or 3.7 or something like that. So our take is, is that right now the truflation number which, which printed 2, I think it was 2.07 yesterday, 2.06 today. There you go. Is more accurate for real time and it's basically showing a significant slowdown in inflation over the last like 45 days. And that is consistent with the data that we see and what we think really ultimately matters. And, and is also the reason why I don't think it's as much of a quandary as you might think. Right. So if you look at overall market liquidity for M2 global versus versus US, it clearly slowed down in Q4 and is clearly on the upswing again. Right. It's not just the U.S. it's also, you know, China and Europe. China is effectively in a, in a massive recession and Europe is basically there as well. And so the US is not in a recession by their normal standards. The problem is, is that most of the growth has been driven by government spending where they're spending $3 in 350, let's say, and change in order to generate $1 of GDP growth. That's how efficient they are.
- [05:15]
Scott Melker
So how many pennies does it cost us to make one?
- [05:19]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, that's, that's not even, that's a blip to be honest. So anyway, the point being that, you know, we don't really know the impact of Doge, but those should have a very positive impact 18 months out on all of this given that they're going to basically take a lot of money out of spending which won't have a Huge impact, dollar for dollar, on gdp. Anyway, it's not as bad as everyone is implying via initial reactions. And I also think that significant liquidity is coming into the markets, and usually the first reaction on these things is an overreaction. And we had an overreaction yesterday, and I haven't really dug in this morning, but we're getting a bit of an overreaction today and we'll see. But, but our take is, is there's going to be significant liquidity injections, you know, this year across the board, including the US as they reset 7 trillion in treasuries. And they don't want to do that at, you know, what, 7, 8% rates, they want to do that at 2% rates. And that's a problem because treasury rates are not 2%. So my guess is that Trump will do whatever he has to do to get those treasury rates down, including deals with China, Japan and others that he's threatening tariffs on.
- [06:40]
Scott Melker
He's going to literally fight the Fed. Right. They tell us not to fight the Fed, but he's going to spend all of his time just screaming at Powell until he does something. The funny thing is, you mentioned that volatility. I've got the bitcoin chart. I mean, we closed two days ago at 95 772. We opened yesterday right there. And we're right back to that exact same price. So all, all this volatility that we hail, we're literally the exact same price for.
- [07:01]
Bill Barheit
Yeah. By the way, somebody was asking me yesterday about, oh, that's how great it is that FTX is giving 120% back, you know, on what exactly? Well, well, wait a minute. So you talk about volatility, right? So for, for bitcoin. Yeah, it sucks because you're getting, you know, literally 20 cents on the dollar. Ethereum, you're actually getting 110 cents on the dollar because it's the same exact price.
- [07:28]
Scott Melker
That's why Vitalik has been working so hard to post about communism.
- [07:32]
Bill Barheit
Right.
- [07:33]
Scott Melker
And to fight Ethereum as hard as he can to make sure FTX creditors get whole. It was all a big strategy by him. Good job, Yago. I mean, what do you make of all this?
- [07:41]
Yago
Well, I. Look, the last few weeks of Trump have certainly given me the sense that right now he's in the driver's seat in practically every single negotiation that he's having. I think the Fed is going to be a relative cakewalk in comparison to some of the other conversations he's having. And he's been willing to Take extremely dramatic moves. Powell and the Fed, they are not designed to fight dramatic moves. They are designed to steady hand, say the same thing every single quarter. Very, very conservative. So my sense is, regardless of where inflation goes, Trump has, has been very clear that he wants to see treasury rates go down, he wants to see interest rates go down. And I think, you know, 1% here, 1% there in lagging indicators of inflation will have zero effect on this.
- [08:33]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think that's right. And speaking of Trump, as I mentioned in the intro, we have Tulsi Gabbard. She's in the mix. Now, this is obviously old from when she launched her presidential campaign, but this is when it was first divulged that she was a crypto holder. And now she obviously has been confirmed spy chief. I mean, what a, what a term. She's the spy chief. Said it back.
- [08:55]
Yago
She's also an X men, isn't she?
- [08:57]
Scott Melker
She is an X person. I don't know if we say those things anymore. Not anymore, but now, but, but she, you know, I mean, she's made some pretty dramatic comments in the past, not even directly at crypto, about CBDCs. This was a quote. Once we allow someone else to control, control our wallet, they control our freedom. She said that this push towards CBDCs was their insatiable desire and mission for total control. She's supported a bitcoin strategic reserve. This is just another person in a long line of people who are joining this government that are all pro bitcoiners. And it's not even like they're in jobs that have anything to do with finance. It's just the kind of people that are being appointed clearly are the ones who support freedom and support bitcoin. Right. It's not like a grand conspiracy theory to put a bunch of bitcoiners in. I mean, you got Brian Quintenz coming in as the head of the cftc, most likely. I mean, this guy was the most, maybe this side of John, Chris Giancarlo, who I'm talking to later today, the most bullet, like the most pro crypto CFTC person we've had, even past administration. So, I mean, Iago, like, I know bitcoin doesn't need this, but damn, it feels good.
- [10:08]
Yago
Yeah, well, look, I mean, on every single time scale you're looking right now, it looks great for bitcoin and, but frankly, even as a bitcoiner, I think it looks great for, for outs, with the possible exception of meme coins. So look, Bitcoin, you've got transitory Inflation was the, you know, Powell declared that inflation would be transitory years ago. It's not. It's still here. That is sucking out the credibility of the Fed and it's sucking out the credibility of, of inflation targets. And so in the longer term, BTC as an inflation hedge, I think you can go long on that. In the short term, you can go long on both the regulatory environment, the SBR and what will be the liquidity environment. As for sort of out, I think right now crypto is doing exactly what crypto does always, which is completely ignore the fundamentals and just sort of trade in its own little universe. Fundamentals I don't think have ever looked so good for anything across the board. Btc, you know, out the whole, the whole gamut, the, the entire industry was under sanction by the United States and pretty much every single other government of the world for the last 15 years. And those sanctions have not just been lifted, they have been completely reversed. It has become a strategic imperative for the United States. So I think really the only thing that could potentially suffer, and has actually in a way already suffered because of the Trump coin and the Melania coin is, is meme coins. Because one of the big reasons that there's been such an influx into meme coins is because that was the one part of the industry that was completely unregulated. The SEC had no interest in meme coins. And so if you want to get a feel for BTC and alts look like in an unregulated environment, I think just look at meme coins over the last two years.
- [11:59]
Scott Melker
And by the way, I mean if there was any doubt about that purse literally said this, this was news we've discussed. I think she said it yesterday or two days ago, but that many meme coins likely fall regulator's jurisdiction. She said the quiet part out loud. She said, yeah, people launch meme coins because they can call them collectibles basically and say they have no utility and good luck, have fun. That's not the SEC's business. Maybe it's the CFTCs, maybe it's someone else. Bill, you have like, I would say unique perspective on what this regime change and all these pro bitcoin people mean because you literally were attacked unfairly and came out even the other side pre Trump, to be fair. So you fought it even in the worst conditions and won. But this has to mean a lot to you as someone who has spent millions and millions of dollars defending yourself, trying to get compliant, becoming compliant. I mean, we discussed the RIA platform that you have how much that costs for you to become that in crypto. I mean, it's been insane for you. This has to be some vindication or at least hopefully.
- [13:02]
Bill Barheit
Yeah. Pierce even implied in her initial comments on what they were going to look at that a lot of these yield products probably weren't securities to begin with and why were we wasting our time on this? And at worst we should give them a regulatory sandbox to operate in to, to make their case, blah, blah, blah. So this is what we were asking for five years ago, you know, even when we had legal opinions drawn up that these yield products were not securities anyway, by the way. So Jonathan Gould has been nominated as head of the, the occ, the Comptroller of the Currency, which is probably bigger news than the cftc. I mean, this is the regulator for the nation's banks. The implication. And, and he used to be the chief legal officer at BitFury and, and so that's huge. I mean, he also has banking experience, which is why I think bitfury hired him in the first place, and also regulatory experience at the occ. So, so he is a fantastic person to run this organization. Clearly a bitcoiner. And I think you're going to see a return to the charter, the, the, the, the digital currency charter that they had given. I think they managed to get one out, maybe two out. One company basically never went live, but I think there's only one of them that's live. And so I think we'll see their willingness to do that again, which would be a win for the space as well because it's much easier obviously to deal with one charter than it is 50 and, or 50 licenses. So, so I'm super excited about having him there and I think, I think this whole kind of pushback on debanking is going to get into overdrive if he's running the occ because the message is going to be very, very clear that, you know, choke point was illegal. And yeah, it's, it's going to be totally. A new day is dawning for sure. And these picks really are hitting home. And, and the people that you're showing on the screen, they have got to be just like beside themselves. And I couldn't be happier. I mean, good riddance to, to the two of them. Seriously.
- [15:09]
Scott Melker
Elizabeth is definitely struggling with this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gutting by Doge. And Maxine Waters was coping hard while still trying to propose her own stablecoin bill, which I found very, very interesting. I doubt that's the one that's going to get chosen when you have them from Hagerty, Hagerty and others, but still trying to get their, their fingers into what's happening here. I mean, it's pretty astounding that in Powell's testimony over the past few days, he's been questioned multiple times about operation choke point 2.0 and had to answer those questions. And he said, he dodged a bit, but he basically said, listen, we've had enough reports that this was a real thing, this debanking, that we have to take it seriously. But also kind of went out on limb and said we never targeted crypto necessarily. Maybe, you know, he can have plausible deniability. I'm also talking to Caitlin Long today, coincidentally.
- [16:02]
Bill Barheit
Exactly. You know, Caitlin is a very calm, demeaning, you know, very rational person. And she flat out said that he lied. And so she's saying he lied, he lied. So, so, you know, I mean, there's not going to be any repercussion for this because the, that, you know, they're not gonna want the sitting Fed chair. But he did clearly lie. I mean, it's, it's, I don't know who's, if, who, if anyone is going to basically suffer consequences for Choke Point. But the good news is it's over. You know, I mean, we're seeing already seeing banks reaching out, you know, very high fees. But, you know, we're willing to onboard you, we're willing to give you a bank account, we're willing to give you FBO accounts for your, you know, RA clients. Right. Things that, you know, I think, I.
- [16:47]
Yago
Think what I'm seeing is that, is that there's still, it's not quite over. It may be officially over, but it's going to take people time to adjust. Everyone's still scared about where does the line actually go. And so I think what we're going to see over the next few months is builders, entrepreneurs, banks, basically all of the service providers in the space and all of the entrepreneurs in the space sort of pushing the limits. Everyone else seeing what everyone else is doing and sort of like children testing where, where the limits actually lie. Because right now nobody knows and everyone's sort of been hiding for the last few years.
- [17:22]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, that's absolutely right. I mean, he even said he had, he couldn't just let it go. He, he, he actually had to caveat his comments with if the banks understand the risks of crypto. You know, honestly, what the, I mean, come on, after all of this, right and, and your bank failures that were driven by your treasury bonds and your, you know, you know, misdated duration positions versus client deposits. You know, you focus on the risks of crypto as opposed to just saying, maybe we got it wrong, period, full stop. You're allowed to say that and people would respect you for it. Maybe we got it wrong. Right. But he couldn't go, he couldn't just leave it at that.
- [18:02]
Scott Melker
No, but I think to your point, Iago is very important. This is sort of like the plumbing is there now. We need the banks to actually want to participate and to adopt it and come back. And that could take a lot of time. Sort of the same idea as we have a million blockchains with endless block space now and we actually need people to use it. Right. So the plumbing's there. We can do it. We need people to actually use it. But it seems that some people are. We have Franklin Templeton expanding 594 million market money fund to Solana. There has not been much huge news about institutional adoption of Solana. It's happening behind the surfaces. All we talk about is the Meme Coin Casino, and that's what's driving Solana. But this is meaningful. It's not huge, but these are real serious, multi hundred billion, trillion dollar institutions now not only using Ethereum and Yago will talk about them using Bitcoin as well, but not only using Ethereum and actually moving to other blockchains.
- [19:02]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, the narrative around it's just Meme Coins was never true anyway. At least certainly not in the last six months. I mean, it certainly allowed us, as I've said on your show many times, to test the efficacy of Solana at massive scale. But clearly the defi numbers on Solana are booming. And I think what you're going to see is a whole bunch of announcements this year on neobanks building on Solana, neobanks building on Sui and, and the Defi. And you talked about like unused block space and I, I, I don't know that I buy that. I think, I think when you look at, and you dig into what's going on on these alternative L1s right now, they're booming. Right? I mean, Aptos is getting real world asset platforms with.
- [19:45]
Scott Melker
Right. I was just gonna say, but with Aptos, they just launched Chardin's. I believe that's how they pronounce it. A million TPS per second. I mean, Visa is doing like tens of thousands. This is many multiples. We'll see how that works in practice. I'm Just saying, we have the speed and the power apparently to literally do everything.
- [20:02]
Bill Barheit
Well, we are now ready as a global society to do what Bitcoin without sidechains can't do, which is scale stable coins to better than debit card and credit card numbers, which is amazing. Now obviously with, you know, Yaga, what you're doing and others, you, you can scale Bitcoin, but a lot of people right now in this current generation aren't there yet anyway because they're not using Bitcoin for anything but digital gold. So. So the opportunity to scale stable coins as a payment rail across those, particularly three L1s, is unprecedented in, in human history.
- [20:42]
Yago
Yeah, I think one, you know, I mean two, two points.
- [20:47]
Scott Melker
Right.
- [20:47]
Yago
Just to the point of Solana, one of the interesting points of data was that two days ago Radium was doing more trade volume than Uniswap. That is a big opening.
- [20:59]
Scott Melker
Yeah, right.
- [21:00]
Yago
And so, and so Solana, you know, they've been leading on meme coins, but they've also been leading on, on Deepin. They've also been leading on the AI sort of agent tokens. They've also been leading on various aspects of Defi. I think that team and the ecosystem around it have been executing really, really well. And this kind of vibrant competition is actually a big part of why I think it's great to add more functionality to Bitcoin and why I've been so dedicated to doing it. Because first of all, I think these are all lessons for Bitcoin. And second of all, this is how it's through this cut, you know, the, the, the, this cut neck competition that you build a robust ecosystem. And, and you know, people used to say, in fact, people still do anywhere sort of, you go, you go to Reddit, you go to blogs, people are still saying, oh, you know, crypto's useless. But stable coins have product market fit, BTC have product market, product market fit. We're seeing more and more projects doing real things outside of this, the place where AI agents have been experimenting and people using them in the real world more than anywhere else has been the crypto industry. So this is an industry that is at the forefront of, of, of data, of cryptography, of, of, of asset management, of AI. I think people are sleeping on what crypto is becoming and will be.
- [22:25]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, you have to follow the developers. Right. So if you have that chart on smart contract revenue, which basically shows Ethereum on a percentage basis going to zero versus the alternative L ones and how quickly it's happened, it's remarkable. Right I mean, I think like 80% of smart contract revenue is now Solana. My guess is that'll be more evenly divided between Solana Sui Aptos by this time next year or certainly late 26. And maybe Ethereum will make a comeback. I don't think so. I think Ethereum is now owned by Coinbase and Base, and they're get, they're extracting the value, which is basically turning Ethereum into a big Oracle database, which sucks, in my opinion. It's not a knock on Coinbase. I guess I can't blame them for what they're doing. I, I blame, I blame Ethereum for enabling this in the first place, but.
- [23:15]
Scott Melker
That'S the first time I've seen you like, overtly bearish on Ethereum. I think in our conversation, I love.
- [23:20]
Bill Barheit
Ethereum, what it's meant to be. I think they made some architectural choices that they're paying the price for now. I think in terms of institutional usage of Ethereum, look, we're one of the biggest users of Ethereum Defi, period, full stop. So I have, I, I know what I'm talking about. All right?
- [23:36]
Scott Melker
Yeah.
- [23:36]
Bill Barheit
And, and we, we have a team that does nothing but evaluate defi opportunities on Ethereum. That's all they do, right? And we spend hundreds of millions of dollars of client assets investing them into myriad five protocols. And we always, almost exclusively use the base layer, right? And we looked at base, we looked at all the Optimum L2s, and it's not what crypto is meant to be. I understand why they exist, they just shouldn't have to.
- [24:09]
Yago
Why do so there? I'm not sure I follow you. So to my mind, right, they are actually the future. And it might be that in the short term, Ethereum pays the price for, for bringing the future forward. But, you know, the, the reason we have smart contract chains in the first place is because that was 10 years ago when Vitalik introduced Ethereum. The only way you could build smart contracts was to have the entire smart contract and the VM shoved into the chain and have every single one rerun every single action, right? Every single validator, every single full node. ZK proofs has made all of that obsolete. And I think the industry is only now starting to catch up to the idea that we actually don't need smart contracts to be in the chains at.
- [24:48]
Bill Barheit
All mutually exclusive points. Right? So you can actually do what you just said on Aptos Sui Solana and still have 15,000 transactions processed a second and not need L2s to do that. I'm Talking about basically outdated architectural decisions without a roadmap for addressing those decisions going forward. The existence of ZK Technologies and L1 versus L2 are mutually exclusive points, in my opinion. So what you said in that regard is totally valid, but you don't need L2s to achieve that. I'm not talking about Bitcoin. Bitcoin.
- [25:29]
Yago
Oh, sure, this is getting a bit technical.
- [25:36]
Scott Melker
Saying you can do it on a layer one now with the Exchange, rather than having to do it on a layer two on Ethereum.
- [25:41]
Bill Barheit
Of course, I mean, that's what, you know, zcash does effectively. Right. So, you know, I mean, it's, can it be done? Yago, of course it can be done. Right. They've chosen a different architectural direction which gives the power to the L2s, which basically removes the value from the L1s, and right now is giving it to Coinbase. And, and I just think that is, to me, terrible because, you know, base is centralized crap. And that's not what I signed up for, you know, so, you know, all the fact, the fact that you can do these fancy things with the other L2s, which I totally get that. That's not my point. Right. My point is, is that they should fix the architectural flaws in Ethereum, even if it's at the expense of L2s. Ethereum's responsibility is to Ethereum, right? And, and they've got it wrong.
- [26:32]
Scott Melker
I go, I mean, we know that on Bitcoin it can't be done without L2s, right?
- [26:38]
Yago
Well, yeah, so, so yeah, I, I, I just, I'm not as convinced that it was the architectural decisions that Ethereum made that was the issue. I think, to a great extent, the reason this is happening is because Ethereum has in many ways decentralized. It's kind of become a bit classified in the way that Bitcoin is. And so comparing Solana or aptos or Sui, which are much more similar to companies to Ethereum, I think, is comparing apples to oranges. And so obviously sui, you know, Solana, they're going to be moving faster. They're able to build a much more comprehensive, you know, phantom wallet, right, Is like, it's almost like the official wallet of Solana. So you've got like a, you said is much more controlled. You've got a system where everything can plug in, you know, the, the depths. They know exactly what wallet the user is coming onto. If you're working on Ethereum, you need to provide, you know, a million different user experiences for a million different wallets and that's just one example of the complexity of dealing with sort of non decentralized systems. So I think it goes far beyond the question of technology. I think it's much more a question of culture and a question of decision making power.
- [28:04]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, I agree with you on that. I mean, follow the developers as I always say, right? I mean they're moving to the alternative L1s and base and they're doing it for obvious reasons. Right? I mean, you know, show me the, show me the incentives, I'll, I'll show you the outcome. Right? So you know, we'll see, we'll see what happens and where we are this time next year. And, and also to your point, you know, where are we trending in terms of what's. What, you know, some people are saying is truly decentralized and I define that as no off switch. Right. I, I would posit Ethereum is there. The L2s are not there, certainly not base, because they could shut that off in 10 minutes. And Solana and Sui and Aptos are moving in that direction of being decentralized to the same degree Ethereum is. And they're getting a tremendous amount of developer growth that Ethereum is not getting. They have a lot of developers, they're just not getting the growth. So let's have this discussion in 18 months and say, okay, where are we in terms of who has no off switch, which is my litmus test, and who has a developer growth? And I have my beliefs and predictions as to what's going to happen and why.
- [29:12]
Scott Melker
Any final thoughts, Yago? We have. We're already past our 9:30 here.
- [29:15]
Yago
Well, I mean we caught, we, we were discussing calling the show Bitcoin and, and I think, you know, it basically is, we, we are very much in a, in a, in a barbell situation. Right. You've got Bitcoin is doing really, really well.
- [29:28]
Scott Melker
Right.
- [29:29]
Yago
And then you have like the other end of the spectrum which is meme coins and more centralized service like products doing very, very well. The middle ground does not hold. It's not tenable because you're not bitcoin enough. You're not a service enough. And that's kind of where Ethereum's gotten stuck.
- [29:46]
Dan
Yeah, that's a good assessment.
- [29:48]
Scott Melker
Bitcoin and bullshit. It's a rough spot in the middle of bitcoin and bullshit.
- [29:52]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:53]
Scott Melker
To be fair, we were saying that bullshit is like what's happening on Solana. We weren't calling Solana itself bullshit, but that's clearly where the attention is. I mean to be fair, like Robinhood's revenues doubled all because basically of, of crypto trading. So the, whether it's on Salon or elsewhere, there's a lot of volume being traded on it.
- [30:12]
Bill Barheit
Yep.
- [30:13]
Scott Melker
All right guys, well, thank you so much. Iago and Bill. Bill, go take your dog out, man. I know it's early, come on.
- [30:20]
Bill Barheit
Yeah, we're gonna have a talk.
- [30:23]
Scott Melker
Thank you guys so much as always. Yago on here every Thursday for bitcoin and I'll see you guys next week. Thank you.
- [30:30]
Bill Barheit
Good to see you guys here.
- [30:33]
Scott Melker
All right guys, and now we're going to move on to the charts. We've got Dan from chart guys here to discuss what's going on. And man, I kind of alluded to it before, all the volatility of CPI and everything. We're just at the same damn price.
- [30:50]
Dan
Yeah, it's, it's a stagnant, slow market. And again, you know, as a trader one of the things we need to recognize is market conditions. When, when to pump the gas, when to pump the brakes. We're definitely pumping the brakes in terms of trading activity and you know, most coins are, we're looking at, you know, two weeks ago the flush low and the bounce high. And that's the range and we're just trading sideways within that range. And it's nice and clear because some names have broken that range and they stand out with relative strength, litecoin binance and but the vast majority are still within this range and we're not going to get any new information until that range breaks. And so for bitcoin, you know, we're looking down at that flush low of 91:1 and that bounce high of 10:26. And if we're not breaking either of those ranges, nothing changes. And again, just a series of lower highs. You know, we've been rejecting from daily EMA 12 each bounce attempt. I've been keeping an eye on this four hour downtrend support line as a visual guide. But again it's, it's very much a hands off range and we're just patiently waiting and we're also waiting on the broader market. You know, the NASDAQ is doing. Yeah, we're getting there right now, trying to test multiple weak highs. So tightening range in the broader market ideally breaks bold to new all time highs. That could be a potential catalyst to get crypto volatility returning again. But again, slow market as you mentioned.
- [32:06]
Scott Melker
I mean bitcoin just kind of doing its own thing. When you look at that though, I mean especially which its Own thing happens to be sideways. I mean Thursday to Sunday, what the top of a. I'm not talking about wicks but of candle opens and closes was 96 6. The bottom was 96 482. So a sub $200 range of opens and closes for four days and now just trading right around that. Right. I mean you could just basically draw that as a line for the middle of most of these candles. There's just nothing happening here.
- [32:35]
Dan
Yeah, just patiently waiting and you know, dominance chart. The weekly higher lows are my guide on dominance. So it'll be bitcoin show as long as those weekly higher lows keep forming and have to lose them if altcoins are going to get any kind of life. And you know we're watching a lot of space for another weekly higher low to be the result of current pullback. So nothing changing in the dominance standpoint at the moment. As I mentioned, a couple of the lead bull names, you know, Binance just rejected from daily Resistance. But again, you know, it's way over its bounce high that most names still have not broken yet. And the other one that I mentioned was Litecoin. Good old Litecoin, not getting much attention but it did get a little ETF bump.
- [33:17]
Scott Melker
There was a little bump on the.
- [33:19]
Dan
ETF news and, and I am watching, I am watching LTC BTC weekly chart just because if you look back historically after long periods of downtrend when you get this EMA 12 and 26 crossing bull, it does get at least a little bit of follow through every time. And so it's on the verge of doing that. So that at least for me is enough to say, all right, Litecoin goes, you know, to the top five coins that I scan every day to see if there's a trading opportunity as a trade.
- [33:45]
Scott Melker
Right. As a trade. You see those are little pops. But yeah, look at that. Those trends against bitcoin are just.
- [33:52]
Dan
Yeah, it'll be flipping bitcoin soon, but not yet.
- [33:56]
Scott Melker
So great flipping.
- [33:58]
Dan
What I'm watching is honestly part of the chart, guys. Community is a bunch of traders, many full time and I just watch what they're doing and most of them are jumping on coins that are newly listing on coinbase. You know, B3. I don't know anything about B3 but it lists on Coinbase, it gets its pop, it's liquid enough and you know, this was a move of a few hundred percent. So I'm just noticing that traders are focusing on things that don't have a ton of price history. Don't have a ton of overhead supply to get their volatility and trading opportunity. But yeah, otherwise, you know, altcoins obviously still have that very negative sentiment at this point in time and we're watching for that to shift. But again, you know, I've said many times I don't think we see an altcoin market like 2021 anytime soon if ever again. And I would love to be wrong, but again that's just wrong. That's just the base standpoint that you need to approach things by and if it doesn't happen, it's a bonus and it's great. But you're prepared for worst case. And I know a lot of people are past that point of being prepared and are in the bag holder phase of things. But again you just, just establish those game plans where you know what your worst case scenario is financially and you know, having the unknown bag hold for six years, we have to eliminate that as a possibility.
- [35:19]
Scott Melker
You have to view these things as, even if you view them as long term as trades and not investments, Bitcoin you can view as an investment, maybe some of the other top ones. But largely you have to have at least some plan for getting out if it goes bad because almost all, I mean look at those charts versus Bitcoin, they all go bad eventually. Almost. There may be a winner here and there but like just holding all alts across the board and hoping for the best. To your point, you've missed so much opportunity here. Yeah.
- [35:49]
Dan
And, and you know it reminds me of penny stocks where it's just the game is dilution and the share count continues to rise over time no matter what because that's how they pay the bills and that's how they pay their officers and pay to keep the lights on. And so obviously a lot of crypto projects as their supply increases, the downward pressure on price increases and that's a long term recipe for downtrend. I mean I could show you 1000 penny stock charts that just have these big spikes on the way down. But the long term Trend is a 95 to 99% loss over a period of years. And there's going to be, I mean the vast majority of altcoins will be that.
- [36:26]
Scott Melker
What else are you looking at in this very exciting time that we're having in the markets here?
- [36:30]
Dan
I've been looking at Tesla. Tesla's got enough volatility that I've been trading, you know, it's coming off all time highs. It just hit first daily oversold conditions. I like playing oversold bounces. I'm looking for a monthly higher low to try and form as a result of this breakout to all time highs that we had seen. And so, you know, I've done a little flip in, traded it yesterday, got myself a nice swing position with a stop under the low. And again that's my trading style is day trade with a larger position size because I'm in complete control where I've got my stop loss and there's no overnight gaps or anything. And then size down a little bit, sell into strength on the initial bounce, get my break even right down near that low, set a stop and let it play out and I don't have to make any decisions for a while at this point and that's definitely my swing trading style. So liking the Tesla volatility recently and again, just, you know, as far as the broader market is concerned, it's been sideways as we look at the Nasdaq rejecting from that resistance now, but just trading sideways for months and months. And this is now December, January, so three, two and a half months of sideways and just nothing changes until we break one of these levels. And again for me that means pumping the brakes with my trading activity while we wait for clarity because sideways chop, you know, if I trade the same way in a breakout market and I apply that same trading activity and fervor to a sideways market, I will give back gains.
- [37:55]
Scott Melker
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean it just seems like a time to watch and wait on most things. I love that you find like one asset kind of that has volatility and just focus on it while it's happening and you can ignore the rest of the broader market in the meantime. That's what I mean by there's always opportunity.
- [38:11]
Dan
Yeah. And that, you know, that's always been my style in terms I know some people that'll get into eight, ten trades at a time and for me it's just one or two. And then again if I set my stop and let it play out okay, I can focus on other things. But you know, if I'm actively watching a setup or actively initiating a trade and doing some initial positioning, it really is just singular one name focus. Because that's how I perform my best.
- [38:34]
Scott Melker
This is the way. All right, that assuming that's all you got for us today, guys. Give Dan a follow chart, guys. Of course I'm going to stick around for a few minutes after I let you go, man. So thank you very much.
- [38:47]
Dan
See you next day.
- [38:48]
Scott Melker
See you next week. All right, guys, so just some housekeeping really quickly you may have noticed on my X channel there's this weird, I'm trying to create a ton of more content, add a lot more value if you guys haven't noticed, launch new shows. Problem is, on YouTube when you have multiple shows in a day, it just wrecks your numbers because it's the algorithm basically like stop showing your first show when you launch the second show, which gets less numbers. But we've noticed very clearly, largely from my work with Mario Novel, that content on X video does exceptionally well and their algorithm is heavily favoring it. So looking to build out a lot more content video wise on X live streaming there when the Fed has announcements. I don't know if you guys noticed that we were doing that before. We didn't do it on YouTube because it wrecks the views on the earlier shows. But so that was a long winded way of saying make sure that you're following me on X because we're doing a lot more video content. Yesterday, literally right after the show that I did with Wick, we had the team from Godzilla. I don't know if you know those guys with their amazing game off the grid, literally just live streaming themselves, playing the game. I was incredibly entertained and we're going to do that maybe even daily because that's legitimately the first AAA game crypto gaming project. And my idea here is to turn my X account on top of what I do on YouTube into just a rolling newsfeed update showing you all the incredible things that are happening in crypto that I can't really highlight on a day to day basis on YouTube. So just making sure that you're following me there and keeping attention. I mean Jefe says X has so many bots, there has to be better social media apps to get down with them. So does YouTube, right? I mean if you look at the. I can't read the comments on almost any social media and AI is making it so much worse. But like YouTube, it's just I go down there and there's like a thousand comments and they're all like bots that are talking about like scam meme coins, right? I can't even find like real human comments, sadly X, at least you can see some of the human, some of the human commentary and. But now they have the AI bots there and you find yourself like reading things thinking they're from human and it's just some AI that responds to every single post. It's so annoying, right? And so it's just really hard. That's why I love the Chat here. You guys are actually humans. Wait until the bots like really get heavily into the active comments on live stream. It's going to be miserable. It's going to be miserable. But listen, so you know you should be following me at Scott Melker on X. Also my other burner account, Crypto Underscore Town hall, which is the X Spaces show that I do with Mario and Ran. But it's just me at this point. Both of them are very busy doing other things. I host the show every day. So that account also heavily rolling Newsfeed is going to be adding some more things but yeah, I would love to give you more on YouTube but I want to make sure that you're over on my ex as well. I mean that you're on top of my newsletter. It's free. I write it every day. Are you guys subscribed to the Wolf Den? Come on. Are you? I know who, who reads this newsletter. I'm gonna push it up here. This is my show. My own part of the show that I never do. But yeah, I mean I, I just wrote newsletter 1138. 1138 newsletters. This was today's wrote about a lot of things we discussed today actually, which is largely all the leaders shaping digital finance. This is free. It's a completely free newsletter. Free every day. Every day. Every single day. Right. So I think that hopefully you guys are signing up for that and I should make the point that for many, many, many, many, many, many years I was so resistant to sponsorships or resistant to being viewed as shilling anything that I just basically did it at a huge loss as a non for profit taking no sponsors of money. We are working now with some new amazing sponsors being very, very careful. One of them, as you may have noticed, it's right there is L Bank. Oh, look at that. Look what it just did. That shouldn't happen. You guys can see my background, see that there's pictures of my family in there. We can't. All kinds of stuff. Look, I don't know why that happened. Some sort of hand motion I just did triggered that. That was awesome. Lbank. I'm not going to point again because it got super weird, but actually one of the largest exchanges by volume been around since 2015 and they're awesome. And they're going to be working with us moving into the future a couple days a week here and very excited to have them. I mean they have over a thousand trading pairs. And here's the offer 20 which is in the description $20 sign up bonus deposit and you have up to 50% trading bonus trade to earn up to 100% cash back, referral bonus, up to 250 USDT. And of course no KYC on them, but yeah. So guys, you know, to, to fund all these things moving forward, I've hired a whole bunch of people. We're going to have sponsors and it's going to be great. You're going to love them and it's going to be amazing. Obviously we have Aptos on Wednesdays. Just a lot of things going on here. So guys, please check out every other channel. Got something else while we're at it. So I'm launching a completely new platform. Another newsletter, likely another entire YouTube channel and whole platform called the Crypto Advisor. We got the name. I'm not supposed to be talking about it yet, but it will hopefully launch on this Monday. And it's an entire version basically of what we do, specifically tailored to registered investment advisors and institutions in the United States. So RIAs, the premise being, so I have partners in this, I'm not going to start bringing up who they are, but epic. And the idea is basically to educate RIAs on crypto so in their own self interest they don't lose the boomer money when the boomers die. And the kids come in and say, what's your opinion on bitcoin, bro? To their dad's advisor, who they're obviously not going to sign up with again. But to make sure that they can speak in an intelligent manner to their clients about bitcoin and crypto, to make sure that they start allocating. Part of this is actually becoming an RIA ourselves. It's going to be a lot now. It'll be free, so you guys will be able to sign up for it and check that content. But it will be much more institutionally tailored content. I might even get in a real studio, put on a suit and you know. But starting with a newsletter, so building so many things and something with Chris from Texas West Capital. Yeah, there you go. That's all I got for you guys today. L bank down in the description. Please check them out. Otherwise I will see you back for the Friday five tomorrow, later. That's dope.