← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:01]
Host
Bitcoin currently seems to be stuck around 105 or $106,000 per coin. But while that's happening, there's a ton happening in the background. Obviously we have geopolitical strife between Israel and Iran with questions as to how the United States will engage in the conflict, if they will at all. Elon Musk announcing that there will be payments and trading on X and of course, stablecoin palooza. Luckily, we've got NLW here to unpack it all on the Friday 5. Let's go. Let's dope. Let's go. This is one of those normal summer weeks where there's not any huge stories that are impacting price, but still, still worth discussing and unpacking everything that's going on. We're back. Last week you were keynoting.
- [01:03]
NLW
Keynoting gallivanting around Europe.
- [01:06]
Host
I mean, just, it's like your priorities are all off. You know, you could have been here talking about all this important news and, and you were out keynoting. But I think we'll start here with that's the wrong story. Analysts say Bitcoin's 100, 000 levels being cemented as the base price for investors. So I guess generally here we can just talk about price action. The fact that bitcoin seems to glued in this range in the low hundred thousands, but even with all the dips we've seen across markets and all the uncertainty, it just doesn't break below 100,000.
- [01:36]
NLW
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that certainly we are, you know, we're tracking bitcoin, I think for a couple different reasons. One, it's always a leading indicator of what's going to sort of happen next in public markets, especially when, you know, a lot of the macro things that have been shaping potential market action have happened overnight, you know, in, in various regions. So that's sort of one reason to look at it. But I think that it's absolutely the case that the longer that it hangs out at this level, the more it creates kind of the psychological, you know, attachment we already had. We had a psychological attachment to 100k on the upside for so long. It sort of makes sense that we're sort of forming that on the downside as well.
- [02:16]
Host
Yeah, I mean, from a psychological level perspective, there's no more impactful number than a hundred thousand. It literally was talked about for years to your point. So you've got to imagine that there's a lot of people are like, I'm just going to buy it every time it gets anywhere close to that. But I am surprised. We haven't even seen 99,980 or anything. It really has held entirely above 100,000.
- [02:39]
NLW
Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's extremely notable. I mean, again, it's one of those, it's a self reinforcing sort of prophecy. So I hope that it continues to hang out here and this becomes the reset forever.
- [02:51]
Host
Yeah, that'd be amazing. It's Selkist that always used to tweet. I can't believe this is the last time we'll see bitcoin under X. Right. So maybe we can jinx it by tweeting that. But generally it does seem like it's been really, really strong. And that's obviously while we still have a lot of geopolitical uncertainty. Trump hints he'll hold off Iran strike, give diplomacy time. I think this is what a lot of people are watching at this point. It's incredible how quickly we absorb what's happening in the world and markets seem to shrug it off. I mean, the very fact that Iran and Israel are lobbing missiles at each other a daily basis seems like it would have had a greater impact on markets, but it hasn't. And immediately markets just basically moved on to what would the United States do? Well, it seems like we're still sort of in a holding pattern on that.
- [03:33]
NLW
Yeah, markets faded this as a thing that they had to care about really, really quickly, rightly or wrongly. I mean, basically, you know, the, when, when this started happening, that was the, the debate on Twitter was World War III or nothing burger and markets voted, you know, not nothing burger in terms of people's lives, but in terms of what they were going to care about very, very quickly. Doesn't mean they're right. But that's certainly, there's pretty clear consensus now, I think that you're right that a lot of this has to do with the various signals that Trump and the administration are giving at any given time. And it certainly doesn't seem like we're cascading towards inevitable, you know, US Involvement right now. So I think that that gives markets a reason to, to be a little bit more calm about it. But it's a fascinating one for sure.
- [04:18]
Host
Yeah. And sort of the last topic I think here that's relevant when talking about price action and what's happening with the market in general is that we continue to see these relatively historic inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs, Ethereum ETFs as well, by the way. But 2.4 billion in eight days. A pretty astounding number considering price isn't moving.
- [04:38]
NLW
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of movement over here for not clear reasons why.
- [04:44]
Host
Yeah, you would think that if you have 2.4, 2.5 billion and you know, just over a week in buying on the ETF side that you would see spot price reflecting that people were one.
- [04:55]
NLW
I mean one of the, one of the sources of or one of the discourses around this is whether we're seeing some of that flight to safety behavior show up there rather than in actual price. You know, is that an indicator of that or is it something else entirely? Hard to tell. Obviously it's, you know, thank God because otherwise people like us wouldn't have the ability to create content speculating on things. But it's, it's certainly it's notable for some reason or other.
- [05:18]
Host
Yeah, talk about the real flight to safety around the world. It's obviously stablecoins. Right. And I think that's our next topic in general. Senate passes genius stablecoin bill giving crypto industry first major legislative win. This obviously has now passed the Senate with tremendous bipartisan support, I believe. 68 votes in favor of that does not happen in the Senate for anything much less crypto related bill. So that's astounding. I spoke to Hagerty actually randomly on Wednesday, the day after this happened. We'd had it on the books for months and I just kind of got impeccable timing. But he said he doesn't think there'll be many impediments in the House that they're already obviously speaking with their counterparts there. And the stable act that was proposed in the House is not far different from the Genius act. And obviously Trump is pounding the pavement on this to get it done. Right. He's on Truth Social saying this is one of his priorities. So it seems like this is going to happen. This is our first of many stablecoin stories. But let's stop here for the moment and talk about the Genius Act.
- [06:14]
NLW
Yeah, I mean after all the bluster and all the last minute is this, you know, are things changing? Is there a resurgence of the anti crypto army? Like all of these considerations push comes to shove, the bill actually addressed a lot of the concerns and had large bipartisan consensus. It's actually very encouraging to see that as much as things got sort of loud towards the last minute, it appears to be cascading ahead. Now the one sort of like poison pill question in the House is whether you know, there's, there are A large group of people, including many people that, you know, we tend to agree with on these issues that are really intent on getting the market structure bill combined, Warren Davidson among them. And I don't, I don't exactly see the logic as it so clearly is not going to happen. But, you know, there's that, that's the, that's the, the, the sort of one wrinkle that I'm keeping track of in the, in the House, you know, debate. I don't think there's issues with the reconciliation of two just stablecoin bills. It's a question of whether the market structure bill can find its way in there, too.
- [07:13]
Host
That would be a disaster. Market structure is so much more complicated than legislating unstable coins. This is so clearly important for the US Dollar, for the United States. These already exist, are always successful wrapping in market structure, which is going to have to dictate what's a security and what's a commodity, how exchanges can operate, who can custody, whether it can be the same broker in custodian market structure is literally everything else. Wrapping these together that goes through the House gets complicated, goes back to the Senate, back to the House, back to the Senate. That's no way that gets done by August if they do that.
- [07:44]
NLW
Yeah. It's so complicated, in fact, that there are basically backup bills that were introduced by Emmer and others to deal with just parts of the market structure bill, specifically the securities versus commodity designation. They rip that part out as, you know, a. If we can't get market structure done, at least let's have that clarity because that's such a big thorny issue, we can kind of focus that in. So given that people are trying to rip pieces out of the market structure bill to try to get, you know, individual pieces passed, it seems unlikely to me that we're going to be able to graph that whole thing onto another piece of legislation which, you know, while bipartisan, was still not an easy road to hoe to get it to where it is. So, you know, we'll see. It could also just be talk. It could be political strategy to get the debate, you know, so who knows?
- [08:29]
Host
Yeah. And as we talk about that, clearly we had impeccable timing as we've talked about from circle with their IPO. Circle stock nears $200 per share, rises over 500% two weeks after going public. So they, they nailed this right before the Genius act obviously was passed. But they caught this perfect moment in time where, where there was this heavy, heavy thirst for a way to invest in stablecoins and there really wasn't. And now you could obviously buy Circle and Coinbase stock obviously flying at the same. Take a look. It's trading up 14.5% pre market, up another $29 right now. So it's going to be opening around 230.
- [09:05]
NLW
Yeah, I mean, I thought you were going to put up a picture of Jeremy Alaira's Scrooge McDuck swimming in his pool of gold after this one. But no, I mean, you know, we talked about this before, but it is, it is very clear that all the market cared about was exposure to stablecoin thesis and all of the details around. Well, all the details just didn't, didn't matter ultimately, you know, but this is, this is, you know, even more than, you know, stock price is always reflexive in the sense that it goes up and people pay more attention and it gets stronger and that creates more opportunities for it to actually get stronger. Right. There's always that sort of reflexivity. But in this case I think it's even more important given that Circle remains at the moment the sort of stable, you know, legitimate or at least regulated stablecoin infrastructure in the US and the, the more that it goes up, the more that institutions get involved and decide to pick this horse rather than betting on whatever sort of, you know, bank stablecoin is going to come next. The more that Circle has the ability to compete when those bank stable coins inevitably show up.
- [10:12]
Host
Yeah, it's just absolutely wild to see how successful this has been. With all the missteps and bad launches that we've seen in crypto, it's just nice to see one get a massive, massive win. And following on the heels of this, it's going to be private stablecoins left and right. I mean, we've got stablecoin adoption by corporates poised to grow after US Senate passes key bill, you got Walmart and Amazon publicly saying they're going to do this Meta obviously already floating the idea of bringing back Libra or some form of that. And of course you move over from the technologists and corporates to the banks. As we know, JP Morgan pushes jpmd pilot on base says deposit tokens beat stablecoin. So this is not exactly a stablecoin but something similar.
- [10:58]
NLW
How dare you use the word stablecoin to describe their thing, which is a stablecoin but not exactly a stablecoin.
- [11:02]
Host
Yeah, how dare you. An algorithmic, non algorithmic, sometimes stablecoin, but on base, like I did not have on my bingo card that JP Morgan would be going to like the degenerate layer two world to start testing things.
- [11:19]
NLW
Certainly the most. That is absolutely the most notable part of that announcement. JP Morgan has been messing around with private and their own blockchains forever. And you know, obviously those things are connected sort of vaguely to existing infrastructure. But this is the sort of, you know, the move to a public infrastructure like this is very, very different play for them and I think shows just, you know, where, where the world is headed.
- [11:41]
Host
Yeah. And should be noted also we saw announcements from bank of America that they're working on this Societe General. I don't speak French, so you know, pardon my horrible Pepe Le Pew accent there, but this is coming every, I mean stablecoin coming to every institution near you.
- [11:57]
NLW
There's going to be a fog, sort of a bit of a fog too that is already being exploited politically where companies are going to talk about adopting stablecoins and that'll be. It'll be unclear or at least made to feel unclear whether that means they're going to adopt Stable Coins as a tool, you know, or a payment that they accept versus creating their own Stable Coin. If you ask the anti crypto army right now every company that is announcing that they're going to interact with Stable Coins is going and trying to create their own Stable Coin which is obviously not what's actually happening. But you know, that's.
- [12:30]
Host
I mean they won't be interoperable. They'll just, you know, I think the market, the free market will decide and we'll probably end up with a few incumbents and maybe a few of these larger ones using them for their own private purposes like a JP Morgan and everyone else will probably get washed out.
- [12:44]
NLW
Yep, that's my next story here.
- [12:47]
Host
Is that Musk's X to launch trading and payments and push toward everything act report. We've been hearing about this for a very long time. Of course we were already supposed to have Doge taking over the world as the base payment for the planet starting on X. But it seems like this is a real announcement that they're going to be pushing towards open trading and payments. Interestingly, I remember they kind of had a deal with Etoro there for a while. Kind of never heard about it again. But I know they had sort of a trading or at least you would get the stock ticker price. Honestly I don't even remember. And payments they've been talking about forever. And that's his background.
- [13:22]
NLW
Yeah, I mean, you know, look, the both of these things are theoretically interesting and are going to be practically interesting based entirely on how much people actually want to use this for that. You know, it's, it's a very hard thing to go from where Twitter slash X is now to the everything app that he envisions. You know, when it comes to, when it comes to trading, it's like who is the audience that is going to trade on X? You kind of have to like, it doesn't seem like it's going to be existing established traders. So you have to think that it's maybe like new people who haven't come in yet, which is totally plausible, I guess theoretically. But I don't know, it's, it's interesting but I would, I would not put my, I'm not particularly bullish on the likelihood of success.
- [14:07]
Host
I 100% agree with that. It's not like your average Robinhood client is going to just flip over and say I want to trade on X.
- [14:14]
NLW
Yeah, but I also listen if, like, if the idea of an everything app for, you know, an English speaking market is compelling to some people, having Elon do it, who has the ability to do things that don't work for a very long time until maybe they do work, is, is a, is a good place for it to happen. Right? Elon, if he does this, he's not going to turn around and turn it off six months later because it wasn't performing. He's going to beat that thing into a, to the ground until it, until it potentially works. So, you know, we'll see.
- [14:45]
Host
Okay, so you and I have had a lot of conversations about Bitcoin treasury companies and what those look like in context of the greater market. It's clearly becoming more obvious that these are the altcoins of this, of this cycle to some degree. But we've started to see obviously XRP treasury companies and Solana XRP companies. Now we got the first report was that TRX was going public, that Tron was going public in a reverse merger. Now the story I guess has been clarified a bit. Justin sun linked firm plans to go public in US with TRX acquisition strategy. I believe they also had in the original announcement that Eric Trump was an advisor. And then he said, no, I'm just his buddy, but I'm not an advisor. But the topic we had was is this putting in the top for crypto treasury companies.
- [15:36]
NLW
I mean, I hate calling tops, but boy, if you were going to be comfortable calling a, calling a, a top, you know, I don't know. Look, I think there's clearly still room to run in terms of Market demand for Bitcoin treasury companies, that's pretty inarguable at this point. And so the, the, the big issue is that even if this is the top, it could be a very long time before the market realizes it was the top. And that's, you know, the in between intervening part is where it all gets chaotic. But I don't know. I will only say this. I know a bunch of people who are sort of outside crypto who have been invigorated by the return of the SPAC structure as a tool. Not because they want to chamath it, but because getting certain types of vehicles public faster is actually like a useful thing to have access to. And boy, are they like crypto's gonna screw it up again for us after they heard this announcement. And it's him or not.
- [16:33]
Host
Whether it's him or not. I already said that when it wasn't TRX to be fair, but it is pretty crazy. I guess it was Dan from Chart Guys who was on yesterday and he was basically saying, I think it was him, but he was saying that the altcoin market is suffering because you can just go trade Coinbase and Circle or Nakamoto or 21 or MicroStrategy. The same people who are investing in ICOs and making these quick 2030 X's if not more, are now playing in public markets where there's 100x the liquidity and it's a stock.
- [17:04]
NLW
Stock. I don't know. Never learn. We'll see how ends never learn.
- [17:11]
Host
Listen, our final story is not necessarily crypto related, but everything is apparently crypto related. Fed officials hold rates again. Still see two cuts by year end. I mean these two cuts have been, they've been right, right there on the horizon.
- [17:25]
NLW
Yeah, the reporting on this is actually weird because, so there was a, this is the most divided I think that the Fed has ever been in terms of where they think things are going to land. Not divided in terms of necessarily of, you know, disagreement about what should be done in the short term, but divided in terms of what they're in, you know, what, what they believe will come next. Powell's whole conversation was about humility and having, you know, no idea how these tariffs were going to impact things and needing more time to see. And when it came to the, the cuts, I think it was, you know, there were the, the, by a margin of like one vote. The, the, the consensus was that there were going to be two, but the number of, of governors who thought that we were going to get zero cuts this year jumped from like 4 to 6. So you got one group who's, you know, still on the 2 train, but you have another group that's, that's growing that thinks we're going to see no cuts. So the, the TLDR is that no one has any idea. And you know, to their credit they're saying they have no idea, basically. And in, in the circumstance of having no idea, Powell's default is always going to be to turtle up and do nothing.
- [18:31]
Host
Trump had some not so kind words for him again this, this week. You know, he had kind of backed off on the rhetoric for a while. What do you call him? I don't know if he called him dumb or not so smart, but you know, it's like you can tell that he's trying not to do it. And then once he starts vomiting about Powell just goes and goes and goes.
- [18:50]
NLW
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if he's trying that hard.
- [18:52]
Host
Maybe not. Yeah, okay, so good point. I don't think. Yeah, I don't think maybe it's fair. I think you love him or hate him. Donald Trump's probably going to tell you what he thinks.
- [19:02]
NLW
Yeah, yeah, no, I, Listen, I. The tough thing is, I don't know, there's the, this is. Right now. What you should do with Fed policy is an area where a lot of reasonable people actually just disagree. It's not strong consensus. I do think that in general people are, I'm seeing more people peel over to the side of it's time to cut then, you know, then, then head in the other direction. But you know, it's hard to argue that things are like real clear given, given just how much is up in the air. You know, we have, we have real volatility and we have self imposed volatility right now. And you know, those two things combine to a very tricky environment.
- [19:39]
Host
Yeah, man, we nailed, we cooked through that. Honestly though, this is still way more exciting than last summer.
- [19:45]
NLW
Yes.
- [19:45]
Host
We were doing these shows last summer. We were like five.
- [19:48]
NLW
Yeah.
- [19:48]
Host
How about the Friday one and a half and we really don't even want to talk about the half.
- [19:52]
NLW
Seriously. Let's go. What? Let's do the thing that they do like on, on the top 40 countdown where they go like list last year's top five and listen to the full first top one song just to kill time.
- [20:02]
Host
Yeah, yeah. Because they actually had good songs. Well, yeah, we had bad songs last summer in that context. So it's glad, I'm glad that we're actually talking about Huge things. I think it's actually more just a function of how big news has become small news as we've become mainstream in such a part of the popular narrative. There was obviously a time when a stablecoin bill passing would have filled five hours of conversation for two months. Yep.
- [20:25]
NLW
Nope. Now it's just. It's deor. It's just part of. Part of the. Part of the scene.
- [20:30]
Host
And I'll take Bitcoin at 105.
- [20:32]
NLW
Exactly. Exactly. It's there. There are worse situations to have. Just be normalized.
- [20:37]
Host
By the way, I love the new emails coming from Blockwork for the breakdown. I don't know if they're new, but I've started getting them.
- [20:43]
NLW
They are. We've. We've integrated the brands, which is always kind of. The intent is to sort of like, bring, you know, make. Make. Make the breakdown. Have it. Have its own life. That's not just me. So excited to see that. For those who don't subscribe to the. What is the breakdown newsletter? Used to be the Blockworks Daily newsletter. It's. It's. It's great. It's, you know, some of my favorite writing in the. In the crypto space.
- [21:03]
Host
So, wait, so that is the old Block Works newsletter is now Breakdown newsletter?
- [21:07]
NLW
Correct.
- [21:07]
Host
That is huge. Yeah. Congratulations. I didn't know. I thought. I was just like. Honestly, I guess I should have noticed I wasn't getting the Blockworks email anymore, but the fact that it started appearing as the breakdown, I was like, yeah, that is really, really cool. Really well done.
- [21:23]
NLW
Yeah, it's great. Good stuff.
- [21:25]
Host
All right, guys, we'll give NLW a follow and go listen to the breakdown. He does this every day. It's amazing. Thank you, buddy.
- [21:32]
NLW
Yep.
- [21:32]
Host
See you guys next week. That's dop.