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- [00:00]
A
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. As usual, we have quite a lot to talk about, but nothing bigger than the postponed indefinitely markup of the Clarity Act. Of course, that was in advance of the markup from the Ag Committee, which was still a couple weeks away. But the biggest news surrounding the Clarity act obviously, is Coinbase very definitively pulling their support for the current iteration of the bill. Before we unpack all this, we do have an awesome sponsor today, which is Zero G can tell you a bit about them. AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. But what if AI can run openly, verifiably and on chain? That's what Zero G is building. The world's first decentralized AI operating system, open to everyone. Imagine a network where you don't just trade tokens, you train, store and run independent AI models at scale. No lock ins, black boxes, single point of failure. Just quick, cost effective, auditable AI that anyone can build. If you believe the future of AI should be a public good, not another corporate monopoly, join us at 0g.AI. That's the number. 0g AI. Now, moving on to the topic of the day, is the Clarity act dead? Yes, it's completely dead. What else should we talk about? That's it.
- [01:16]
B
Perfect. There's so many things in here, but I think that if you reduce it to its most basic form, this is the clear, and I mean clear proof that the banking lobby's money is controlling the Senate. And it is something that from. If I was sitting in the White House, I would be bathing the living crap out of Tim Scott right now. I mean, this is the sort of thing that, you know, it's one thing for arguing about AML and KYC on defi and how you want to control the rails. It's a very complicated system. You know Austin Campbell, who is too bad I don't see him on the list here, he would be great today, you know, unpack this a few days ago. There are issues that are complicated, issues that are difficult, that you can understand that smart people and people of good moral fiber could have arguments over. It is not possible to make the argument that banks should be subsidized over $100 billion a year at the direct expense of the average American consumer and have make that argument that this is somehow a good thing without ever looking at the data. Because the data shows that that's not true. And if I'm sitting in the White House and I know. And the same human being, Donald Trump, who's claiming that he wants to the individuals with some dumb ideas like capping credit card interest below, you know, at levels that frankly, you know, Michael Saylor's paying higher interest to buy Bitcoin. So, you know, though that level is insane. You would think that from a populist perspective, a, a act that would literally take a hundred plus billion dollars a year and put it in the hands of people other than the banks would be something that's obvious, yet that here we are and that is what's going on here. And so yes, you know, Coinbase looks at this and says, no, honestly, Coinbase has a huge vested interest here. So ordinarily I would look at this and say, well, maybe this is because it's their vested interest that they don't like it, but I don't think that's the case here.
- [03:34]
A
No. So listen, there's a huge. The vested interest comes obviously with the rewards, quote, unquote, or yield on stablecoins, which obviously Coinbase wants to do and the banking lobby has pushed back against. But looking at Brian Armstrong's tweet, he also pointed out a de facto ban on tokenized equities. I spoke with Jake Chervinsky, everybody. Listen, if you want to actually unpack this, not to pump my own show, but this morning Jake Chervinsky is the actual lobbyist and lawyer who's working on this on Capitol Hill. I had him on for 30 minutes. He unpacked this. A de facto ban on tokenized equities. And that was not language that they saw until within the last week. So when you hear Atkins talking about project crypto and tokenizing everything and the DTCC talking about tokenizing everything, that's effectively being banned now in the Clarity act, in language that wasn't there before. Next defi prohibitions giving the government unlimited access to your financial records and removing your right to privacy. This is going back to the debates we had about wallets, having to KYC everybody and defi and all the impossibilities of that literally can't happen. Logistically, that's back in the bill. Erosion of the CFTC's authority, stifling innovation and making it subservient to the SEC. That one we can debate all day. But it's not just to be clear, it really is not just about stablecoins. And as I talked to Jake and as I did my research this morning, this thing was never going to pass. I've been smoking absolute crack Copium the entire thing. There's no chance it is not happening. In my mind I could be wrong. Maybe as you said, maybe coinbase comes back with new. This was never happening because these issues are things that the politicians are so deeply entrenched on and politically are so unpalatable for different parties that they're not reaching an agreement on these in one day on a markup.
- [05:21]
B
Oh no. To say it's dead is interesting. I mean look. So let's unpack those two things so you have the next.
- [05:28]
A
Let me rephrase that. Dead for now. I'm not saying we will never ever get market. I don't think we get it before midterms and I definitely don't think we get it once the Democrats take the House.
- [05:37]
B
But, but I want to be very clear about something Scott. The reason that there's a ban on tokenized equities in here in the fine print is because the banks are the ones who control the equity market. And the last thing they want held DTCC is less. Who actually does handle the back end right now, you know, they, they're not lobbying against it but you're seeing the big banks because once you have, and this is the point that they, that people need to understand and maybe we, we can make it obvious to the politicians. Once you have everything that is tokenized it immediately introduces competition into every nook and cranny of the financing businesses that permeate Wall Street. So let's just give a simple example so people know what the hell I'm talking about. Imagine right now there's a market I'm going to pick on a really simple one. Stock loan. It's a multi billion dollars in profit. So we're not talking about small numbers. It is controlled almost completely by the large prime brokers or Gerald Banks. The banking lobby is primary interest. If you are a lender, that is you are a fund and you have and you control a lot of equities, you get a percentage of the stock loan revenue made by the prime brokers around 10%. At the same time if you're a borrower you're paying a fee that, that is effectively set by an oligopoly. So the fee you're paying is, is much higher. At the same time there's this structure of locate and borrow within the system that creates all sorts of pathologies. Two that are obvious. One, it allows for what some people will call naked short selling because once you do a locate you don't necessarily have to find it. And guess who Doles out the ability to do that. It's the prime brokers. The second pathology is it means that larger hedge funds or funds that pay more fees have a much huge competitive advantage in sourcing borrows. And so the arbitrage mechanisms are broken and the banks make more money. It is, you could see how all that that exists now. The instant tokenization happens and you can have tokenized equities. There is no longer locate and then borrow because effectively you're going to have to source it. It's going to be in real time and it's there just like crypto is. Well, that means no favoritism anymore. Plus you get full transparency on what the price that it costs to lend or borrow. And that will introduce competition, meaning that the economic rent, the, the extraordinary profits that are being made goes away that same. So that's what tokenization does. And that's why Paul Atkins is so bullish on it, because it is massively bullish for the overall users of the equity market. It is massively bearish for the people who are the current gatekeepers that are making profits. That same sort of analysis could be done on a ton of other businesses from interest rate swaps to. I mean you could go on and on. We're talking trillions in businesses. That is why the banking lobby is pushing so hard. So when I talk about the banking lobby, yes, stablecoins is part of it. It is not all of it. That's why I made that point. So I'm sorry for the diatribe, but I'm pissed off.
- [08:47]
A
Yeah, let's go to the panel. I saw Carlo and then Tom Sansa.
- [08:50]
B
Yep.
- [08:51]
C
Good morning, Scott.
- [08:53]
A
Morning, Carl.
- [08:54]
C
Okay, so yes, disappointed. I think what was jammed in in these amendments is definitely a full blown attack on defi and privacy. Unacceptable. What was jammed in with respect to adding an extra hurdle to the tokenization of assets that will already have gone through the full SEC scrutiny and qualified as securities. To now require this additional layer to tokenize an asset is clearly a unnecessary hurdle that's being implemented to stifle growth in the sector and that clearly hurts Coinbase's primary bags because they want to jump into this space and they are a for profit corporation that answers to stockholders. I've been very vocal about the fact that banks are really pushing hard to protect themselves in the aftermath of the Genius act and to force Congress to in a backdoor effort not amend the Genius act or rewrite the Genius act, which is not going to happen. But now trying to do a stealth rewrite of the genius act through clarity, so that they can maintain a monopoly on this notion of rewards and yield because they're terrified they're going to lose deposits, and it's just strictly protectionism. Now, I would love to put up in the nest something that I put together today, which was kind of my thoughts and impressions on this, which is that I think this is actually an interesting change in the paradigm here, because this is clearly a battle between the banks and the TRADFI sector and what we now can conclude is the crypto lobby and the fact that one company, one company in one X post from the CEO was able to completely shut down the legislative process. Here is an interesting thing that's happening because we've been very well aware of the fact that banks have a strong, strong lobbying influence over the bank sector, over the Banking Committee and over legislators. We know that traditional finance has got a lot of influence, but short of JP Morgan, I can't think of another company that could literally completely shut down the process. I mean, within minutes, or let's say within an hour of Brian Armstrong's post, Scott had paused the scheduled amendment hearing today. They have essentially paused the one that's supposed to happen in agriculture. And now everyone's back to caucus. So I'll close with a positive note. I think that this is actually, in the end, a positive thing for the crypto sector. I know that there are a lot of other adjacent crypto firms like Kraken, that are not happy with Coinbase and how they have derailed this process. However, I think it ultimately confirms that the legislative process has to take the crypto lobby serious and that banks are becoming, I think, a little bit more marginalized in this whole thing. So I remain hopeful. Unfortunately, we have a pause next week for Martin Luther King, so nothing's going to happen then. We're going to revisit and see if the Senate Agriculture Committee and their markup goes forward. I caught your interview with Jake. I thought it was outstanding and he did a great job of covering it. But I think ultimately this reinforces that the crypto sector is a force to be reckoned. And definitely Coinbase has a lot of influence in Washington.
- [12:32]
A
Tom, I think you were up next. And then I see Kelly's hand after that.
- [12:37]
D
Yeah, I think we covered a lot of the major points here. Yield being the most salient one. And this is near and dear to Coinbase's heart. Right. They make an absolute ton of revenue off yield for USDC as a circle, obviously. And this is where the banking sector is. You know, bread is buttered, really. This is where they make all their money. So if they give away their potential interest revenue to someone like Coinbase and these Neo banks, I mean, they're. They're in really big trouble now in terms of this bill, there's actually a lot of support. So Kraken has supported it. As the speaker just noted A second ago, Ripple for whatever that means, supported it. A16z, the biggest investor in the space in crypto, but one of the biggest tech investors worldwide, Chris Dixon, supported it, and there's a number of others who have actually supported this bill.
- [13:23]
B
So it just.
- [13:23]
D
It does go to show you how far Brian Armstrong's voice does carry when he speaks. Now, you know, I think it's very, very unlikely we're going to see any movement on the yield portion of the bill, because as I mentioned, banks really need that, and there's no way around that on their side. But you know what I think these others who are supporting the bill see is that there are some workarounds and there's still the ability to get some rewards and have some cute language in there that can pass revenue back to customers. And there's still a lot of rulemaking to be done, even if this version of the bill did pass subsequent to its passage. So I think there's a lot of wiggle room there. And it seems really where Coinbase sort of stopped and dropped the hammer was when the on chain securities portion of it and the RWA portion came out, because Coinbase is moving towards an everything exchange. So, you know, if there can be some sort of clarity there, I think that's really what can get this thing over the line. The other issues in terms of privacy and who has jurisdiction, CFTC or sec, I think are all sort of, sort of in the background to these two major issues of tokenized equities and yield, which I feel pretty optimistic we can get towards just because there is so much momentum that is in time and effort that has been put in this bill. And you don't see bills with this much time and effort just completely go by the wayside.
- [14:40]
B
Right.
- [14:40]
D
They usually get passed in some form or fashion. So I'm still optimistic for 26.
- [14:47]
E
Kelly, continuing on there, this is nothing new technology.
- [14:51]
A
Hey, Kelly, your mic is really quiet. Maybe it's just for me, but I don't know if there's any way to.
- [14:56]
B
Yeah, it's like. It's like it's way away from you.
- [14:58]
E
Can you hear me better?
- [14:59]
B
Way better.
- [14:59]
A
Yeah, way better.
- [15:00]
F
Yeah.
- [15:00]
E
Sorry. It was on the Wrong mic. Yeah, so there's nothing new here, right? This is a story of technology displacing power structures of the old system, moving to a new system. I mean, you look back at the late 1800s when the cars came out in London and there was regulation for the cars to have a driver, a, a stroker with a flag, somebody had to walk ahead of the car in order for you to be, you know, to have license and to meet regulations to drive that car. Of course, that completely ruined or, or limited the ability to use the car for what it was worth. And a big part of that had to do with people not understanding technology, but also the power structures that were in the horse drawn carriage, you know, sort of ecosystem. Now, looking at crypto, what's shocking to me is, and it's exciting that we're in a place where there's a lot more transparency and discourse on a mass scale with things like X and media and social media and stuff like that. But how, how, how obvious it is of the disproportionate advantages that blockchain is ushering in while simultaneously really shining overwhelming light on the, the, the, the sort of flawed controls that the banking system has had. And those controls also limit, you know, the democratized access to your money of, you know, when it, when it's in a bank because it's, and they're basically profiting off of you and your money. And here we are with the better technology that's faster, more democratized, more people can have access and you can also make money being a liquidity provider and staking things and securing networks. And yet at the same time, it does. I do understand that the, the, the government part of this in that they do worry about the flight from one, one system to the other because it could cause some disruption. But I think we could all agree that we're in a place right now where I think everybody would be okay with a little bit of disruption so we can get to a better system. I hope, especially with Brian Armstrong and some other voices that are up at the top of the helm here, that they do move more quickly than, you know, a five to eight year period to make this happen. Maybe sometime this year. But I'm right there with you, Scott. It's, it's, it's feeling like the, the promises of how effective things are going to be and move. Especially when we have a president and the House and the Senate all with one party, it's kind of surprising to see that in control. I mean, it's kind of surprising to see that they're not very effectively moving forward and getting things done. And it feels like we're in a very limited window. So I would hope that they would get these things sort of sorted out before the midterms, but we'll see.
- [17:38]
A
Yeah, I think there's also an element where the staffers were dealing with the lobby and talking about it, and the senators actually probably took a look at this for the first time and said, what the hell am I signing?
- [17:49]
B
Yeah, well, that always happens. And that's the dirty secret of American politics, that the staffers are the key. And without getting annoyed or trying to get political, when staffers don't have as limited as we are in terms of the ethics of members, whether the House or senators, it's even less so on staffers in terms of where the revolving door goes, et cetera. And so it makes the lobbies that much stronger. And people need to understand that. You know, it's just that the trick to all of this is crystallizing issues. I mean, unfortunately, where I start to. Even though I don't agree with you, Scott, I don't think it's dead. And I think that we have a lot a shot of getting somewhere. It's going to require, and I hate to use the word because it's a pun, you know, clarity on the two key issues, which is really how, you know, how will. Will this block progress on tokenization and will this entrench the banking, you know, you know, profit margins the way they are. Those are the two things. But here's the problem. The problem is the Republicans are looking at getting wiped out in the midterms. Meaning in particular, if you're Trump, two years of having to deal with impeachment bullshit and everything bogging down in his agenda. And his own party had deserted him yesterday on a totally different thing. This, the National Endowment for. So that's an issue. So maybe, and this is sad, but maybe if you're the Republicans, you want to be able to blame the Democrats and make this an issue and see if you can energize the crypto lobby in the midterms. I hate that, but I. There's got to be an element of that going on. It'd be interesting to hear what Ron Hammond would say about that.
- [19:35]
A
Yeah, I. I have a lot of thoughts, but I want to go to the panel. Mauricio.
- [19:40]
G
Hey, guys. So a fascinating discussion. I think what stood out to me from this whole thing, and I mean, just from a market's perspective, if you look at the price action from yesterday, Bitcoin had a phenomenal day. And if you look at the movements broadly and all the other tokens, there wasn't anything major. In fact, I think Ethereum was also up, which is sort of a defi proxy. And I see that as some of this, in my opinion, I think was already priced in. I don't know that the market really expected this to turn out differently. Again, just by looking at the reactions and the price action and the other point around the relative strengths of the lobbies. And again, for this I'm not, I'm not a banking expert, I'm just, I want to bring this up for the discussion or for the, for to hear everyone else's thoughts. But the other point that I don't think it's spoken enough is the leverage that banks have. So banks, and again, I'm just looking at grok now, banks are holding 4, $4.6 trillion worth of treasuries with about 2 trillion of that being agency securities, mortgage backed securities. So I think that if, as frustrating as it may be, if the powers that be don't play ball with the banks, I think they do hold leverage to basically exert some pain, I would say, in markets as a result of this. And I don't know that the crypto lobby has a similar sort of implication because banks could touch, not just deposits, but they could touch equity markets. They could also touch real estate, which I don't know that Trump wants to poke that bear before the midterms. But I'm curious to hear other people's opinions.
- [21:26]
A
We can jump around. I don't know if anybody has a specific opinion. I will tell you that politically I don't know if anybody saw Blumenthal's op ed on Fox, Senator Blumenthal, but if you wanted any clarity on, no pun intended, on where this is headed or who's going to capitalize on it, well, the anti crypto army never left and they're coming back stronger than ever. Blumenthal basically said that we need to slow down, that crypto is an existential risk. But he went on to use Silicon Valley bank and Signature as examples for why clarity should not pass and should not even be considered, which is the most disingenuous bullshit that I've ever heard in my entire life. We all know that Silicon Valley bank failed because of interest rate, duration and the way that they manage their balance sheet. Literally nothing to do with crypto. And Signature bank was literally murdered on a Sunday when they weren't insolvent, had no issues Just because they were involved with crypto. So we're getting the same crap arguments now coming back to stifle this from a certain side of the aisle. And it's not gonna pass. There's no way they're getting seven Democrats now on the Senate side to pass us.
- [22:36]
B
Well, I don't know about that. I mean, you know, the, I'm not sure that the Elizabeth Warren wing is that powerful, but you know, who knows? I mean, there are a lot of Democrats out there.
- [22:45]
A
Wait until November.
- [22:46]
B
Oh, I know. We will see. I mean, you're right. I mean look, at the end of the day, there are so many Democrats that are in our space or that you talk to who continue to make the claim, oh, the extremes aren't, the extremists aren't in control of our party. And they, and, and the thing is, is that you can do that if you don't look at really specific issues. But as soon as you dig that, you, you know that they're wrong. And it's, it's sad to a lot of people. But the, the point here is that the banks and, and like Silicon Valley using that those arguments literally look like stupidity to people. I mean, because it's just dumb. But the tokenized equity ones and the interest ones are really, really obvious. It's a question of should depositors make money or banks. Now, Maurizio, one thing you said I totally disagree with, right. The bank's leverage for the fact that they own Treasuries. It's not about that. If the banks lose deposits and it goes to stablecoins, the stablecoin holders will, you know, the people who issue it will be holding Treasuries. So we will just move from one hand to another. So I don't think that's a big deal.
- [23:54]
G
But what about the agency? What about the agency bonds like the mortgage backed securities.
- [23:58]
B
And is that. Well, I mean, yeah, that's an interesting question right now the way if it's under in stable coins, you can't own it. So what do you need for that there? You need to be able to have tokenized money market funds and other funds that can be, that could be issued. You know, the banks own this crap and they own a lot of it. And all of the arguments and I mean every single time the banking lobby writes something that says why do we need to have this? No competition for our deposits. It's not so that they can own all of what you just said. It's so that they could quote, make loans to, you know, inside communities and help small businesses. It's the most disingenuous argument ever. And so what you just said is literal proof of how complete bullshit their argum argument is. But yeah, you're right. I mean, but there's no reason to believe that whoever has money that there would be, that the banks are more likely to buy agencies. I mean, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, sure, that's why Trump is pushing them, but the banks, No, I mean there's, there's no reason to believe that the banks do this out of the goodness of their heart. They do it because they think they can make more money, right?
- [25:08]
G
No, I think there's a pretty sinister partnership between the banks and the government where whenever the government needs stuff to get bought or needs to make exemptions or need to plug holes or duct tape around the financial system, they can basically call on the banks. And the banks have, you know, for better or worse, have a reputation of being a, you know, being there when they were needed and sort of playing ball with whatever they need. And I think that might be more of the reason.
- [25:37]
F
Right.
- [25:37]
G
Like again, these mortgages, I personally, I'm in the lending business, right. So I pay very close attention to the cost of capital.
- [25:45]
F
Right.
- [25:45]
G
And I'm not sure which sort of, if you look at the, at the markets today and you look at what SDRC is doing and the type of opportunities that exist in other lending markets, the fact that mortgage rates are still where they are and I think of them as artificially low leads me to believe that there are some other incentives that are basically, scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, I'll protect your regulatory moat and I will basically let all these people, I'll protect you from competition as long as you continue to do these things that you wouldn't otherwise do, like buying my mortgage backed securities or keeping my mortgage rates at a particular level. That's my argument or my thinking.
- [26:32]
B
Yeah, I mean we'll, we'll agree to disagree on that. I think that the much more sinister thing is we will give you, protect you from competition as long as you continue to contribute to my campaign, hire my relatives, hire my staffers and etc. Etc.
- [26:48]
G
Well, tomato, tomato, but I think it's, it's similar sort of structure right now.
- [26:53]
B
One is greed and corruption and one is, you could argue, you know, if you were right, then I would feel better because at least they're trying to do something that's good for the American consumer. But I don't believe that, not, not even slightly.
- [27:06]
G
You sound like me. Talking about the Venezuelan regime.
- [27:09]
B
Well, I mean just, just to be fair, I mean I did spend close to a decade at Morgan Stanley and 14 years from Salomon Brothers through Citigroup. So it's not like I am unaware of how the and sat as a managing director at Citibank for four years. So I do understand how these people approach things and it's nowhere near as monolithic as you think. And the people who are buying mortgage backed securities have absolutely nothing to do with the lobbying people, they don't care. They're buying it specifically for yield. They're not even involved in those decisions in all likelihood. I'm just telling you that, I mean it is what it is. But anyway, we're way off the topic Scott, with our other hands up because I don't see anybody, I don't see.
- [27:50]
A
Any at the moment. Maybe Listen, I mean with the Clarity Act, I think we've unpacked it. Maybe we should talk a little bit about the bitcoin move because we could have or just markets in general unless anybody else has takes on clarity because I think it remains to be seen but obviously we had Bitcoin making a nice move over the past two days basically trading from we'll call it 91 up to almost 98. I think it surprised a lot of people. It actually happened on decent volume and looks like today is kind of a normal retrace or reset. But you know, is this the, is this our moment? Is there anything meaningful here? What would be the catalyst now? The Clarity I'm saying is dead potentially have for it to continue on. Well, I mean anyone's thoughts.
- [28:39]
B
I hate that word catalyst because I, I, I, I and you know I, I've said this many times. I think that yes there are sometimes catalysts but more likely the, the rally that, that I believe that Matt Hogan and I were talking about yesterday will be a slow grinding rally that just because the sellers are exhausted and they're still buying demand and that's Bitcoin today. If you look down, you know the, what's going on. I mean Ethereum and Bitcoin are tracking they're almost exactly the same down 1% or a little bit less than that. Almost all of which after the Clarity news got digested. Although Brian Armstrong came out yesterday, there was a dump right at the New York open from 97 down to, you know, below 96. And Ethereum had is almost exactly the same chart. Some others a lot of the other altcoins are getting absolutely hammered down significantly more and that actually Makes sense. And I haven't looked through all the RWA side, but I would imagine that, that people who are banking on that massive TAM coming soon are disappointed today and that that makes sense. I mean, is it, you know, you could say it, whatever. But as far as bitcoin is concerned, I don't think clarity has a whole lot to do with bitcoin. Most of clarity has to do with opening up the plumbing for the rest of crypto. And I think that people will start to see that. I think that however, the, the more the most likely scenario is something gets passed and it just gets scaled back. Right. And we'll see. And so, you know, I'd be really curious what people think about, you know, what will happen and why markets care. Because it explained to me when the SEC and CFTC both this space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces today say Bitcoin is a commodity. The only difference under clarity is that bitcoin will then be regulated. Its spot bitcoin trading will be regulated by the cftc. Right now there's no regulation on spot bitcoin trading. Okay, good, we got a couple of hands up. Kelly, what do you think?
- [30:42]
E
I mean, I think, I think the broader market doesn't really have a deep insight on the distinction between bitcoin and crypto. And, and that's kind of a bizarre thing to say. But I think the majority of people out there, I think the impact here is seeing Brian are seeing the bill that was supposed to go, you know, for markup and discussion and Brian Armstrong coming out and posting what he did and, and having it essentially, you know, within hours killed. I think as bizarre as it sounds, I think that's very bullish because it signals a very entrenched and sort of powerful voice within the, the D.C. d.C. Space that has impact there. So the fact that he had issue with this, spoke about it and it wasn't some behind closed door from another source, Brian Armstrong posted and then we saw that that impacted that bill not moving forward. So I think the, the power of the crypto voices in D.C. i think is the bullish signal here. And I do think that we're going to move forward and I, I agree. I think it's going to be scaled back a little bit on both sides from the bank control, but also from everything we want. But everybody knows a good negotiation, a good compromise is when everybody leaves a little bit unhappy and moving forward. But you know, with where we're at right now in price action, I mean I couldn't be more bullish. I think everybody's just so used to looking at the previous cycles and expecting, you know, 25 candles at some point in the cycle and we may get that. But I, I agree with you, Dave. I think it's going to be a slow grind to the up. You know, sideways consolidation. Bore people out again. Continue up. Bore people out again. So right now plan C put out a great chart the other day showing that the previous cycles with these banana zones that we've seen in this cycle kind of being more institutional in some ways, a controlled sort of liftoff that never feels like liftoff. It's just now it's, this is where the, the rubber meets the road, where time in the market beats timing the market. And I think it's going to become more and more true as we, as we move forward. But I do feel like a lot of the OG selling we see it in on chain is starting to, you know, reduce dramatically here. I think that rotation into the institutional class for the most part is probably near done. So I think that controlled move upward is imminent.
- [33:08]
B
Mauricio, is your hand up a phantom or, or is that, or is that a new phantom?
- [33:12]
G
Phantom.
- [33:13]
B
Okay, yeah, you never, you can never tell.
- [33:17]
A
We gotta let Mike tell us what's going on with the markets. Right?
- [33:21]
F
Hello, can you hear me? Right.
- [33:23]
A
Hey Mike.
- [33:23]
B
Hey.
- [33:24]
A
I hear you.
- [33:25]
F
Yep. Yeah. So I look at the market very simplistically. I would just want to point out the stoic example of a disciplined trader is the all the moving averages, 200 days are heading lower and we bounced and it's early in the year and there's a lot of optimism. I see myself as a worthy short bitcoin starting at 94,000. If it closes above a hundred thousand, I'd start worrying in. The 200 day moving average is 106. So if it goes there, people can say I'm stopped out and then we can go down. But to me these are fair markets. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index 200 day moving average has rolled over. I don't see all the bullishness in markets that have rolled over. Now you can use other formats, but to me this is a stage of the market where you walk into the year and you walk in flat and you look for opportunities. Because my base case for this year is we will see a pickup in stock market volatility. I mean that 180 day volatility now is running around 11% historical average 18 that will go up. It'll give us some opportunities and you look for Opportunities. So for me, so far as an X trader, I look at it, maybe if I'm sitting at a hedge fund, okay, copper just went above 6. Test a short get started. Bitcoin got, got above 94. Test the short get started. Now if we stop out, stop out and reassess, if we start tickling down below those levels, then add to it. And to me that's what's going to happen here is this market is so overdue for that and it's just like saying, just prove the strength, prove me wrong, prove those bear markets are not bear markets. And maybe we can. The key thing like last year was kind of was a great signal. You know, we all knew Michael strategy was, was silly and it gave us a great signal to go down. But it did drop to like a 55 discount to its 200 day moving average. It's got a way oversold bear market, but it is a bear market. And you, you know, we all know what happens in bear markets have short cover, sharp short covering rallies, a lot of false hope. So I think anybody bullish cryptos is, is in false hope mode. You have to have the stock market go up. It's a bear market, it's just started. And to me the downside is much more worthy than the upside and willing to test it at the levels.
- [35:24]
B
I'm going to defer.
- [35:25]
A
Scott, I saw Tom's hand up, I think.
- [35:28]
B
Yeah, good, excellent.
- [35:29]
G
I did, yeah.
- [35:31]
D
So I'll just piggyback off that a bit but also pivot slightly. I think we're seeing a broader proliferation of crypto into financial and almost all of fintech infrastructure.
- [35:43]
B
Right.
- [35:43]
D
You've seen this very saliently with just poly market odds being placed everywhere and integrating with a number of financial exchanges. You've seen a number of IPOs that are coming up this year, Kraken and a bunch of others. You're seeing real world asset expansion and interest from everything from mortgages to equities and this sort of everything exchange is popping up not only from Coinbase but from Robinhood and a bunch of others. And crypto is sort of fading into the background of a lot of these things. And you're going to start to see folks who want exposure to that and have been sitting on the sidelines. We've been saying this for years, but even silly announcements like you know, bit miner investing 200 million into Mr. Beast and his company now, like there's obviously something there that Mr. Beast is going to start marketing or talking about crypto or having it integrated into his products, and he's the biggest creator in the entire world. So you're just going to continue to see these broader crypto partnerships until crypto just doesn't seem like it's rat poison anymore, and it doesn't seem like it's speculative tech anymore. It just becomes part of, you know, whatever you're doing and whatever you're offering is. So, you know, I'm seeing things like that, and then just the rumblings behind the scenes and, you know, we start debating about these silly things like, you know, kind of, where. Where are we going to get this last push and momentum on, you know, the Clarity Act? You know, it sounds like we all think we'll eventually get there, or, you know, where are we exactly in the market cycle? You know, there's, in my view, at least a very strong impetus for the Trump administration to. To put their gas, put their foot on the pedal throughout this year, notwithstanding all the things they did last year, the big beautiful bill, et cetera. So, I mean, all this means to me is, you know, more and more excitement for this year and 26, and I think we got the washout at the end of 25 that we needed, and, you know, we're going to continue up.
- [37:32]
A
Yeah, I'm generally bullish, too. It's just not because of Clarity.
- [37:36]
B
Yeah, I think that. I think it is. I think silver is something that. I know we're smelting town hall now, but I think understanding where the animal spirits are, the fact today silver is consolidating down like 3% and. And it's consolidating at the 90 level. Two weeks ago, we were talking about silver dropping below the 70 level. So just the magnitude. Now, the reason I mention it is because everyone who says that bitcoin has matured and you won't see volatility anymore is on serious hallucinogens. Now, why do I say that silver is a much larger asset than bitcoin is at these prices, and yet we're seeing 20, 30% moves in a couple of weeks. To think that bitcoin, which is far newer traditionally, has longer, much more volatility measured by weekly and monthly. I mean, to say that bitcoin's going to stay with this lack of volatility, I think is crazy. And that's the important thing, because where Mike and I differ is I think that there's real buying. You know, people like Matt Hogan kind of corroborate that thesis, and the speculators are pretty much aligned on the short side. And when that flips that's when things change. But do I think that it's a worthy short, you know, from a tactical trading point of view if we get that first move to 100? Yeah, I think it fails there. I absolutely do. Do I think that anything at the level it's at now is relevant? No, I don't. 94 was relevant. 96, 97, 98, 99 aren't. And so what you see is lower volume moves on these things. Now as far as the Galaxy Crypto index which is predominantly Bitcoin and Ethereum, I mean look, rollover however you want to look at it, stock market's still at all time highs and corporate profits are projected to go up another double digit this year. So yeah, you may see something that happens that's bad, but you may not. And the endumerism is problematic. But I, I prefer to watch to see what's happening in the stock market. If you start seeing divergent weakness, that's bad. But what have we seen this week? Actually the opposite. The Russell 2000 is the better performer. Right. So you know, to me, you know when you look at markets, you have to look at at all of what's going on and, and frame it in context.
- [39:58]
F
I just got a follow up on that, Dave. Absolutely. Remember the time of year this is, this is typically we get to the seriously overly optimistic new positions going on and as a trader you just look at okay, what are my opportunities this time around? This time last year, crude oils peaked around 80, it was seriously silly. Corn peaked around 5. Seriously silly. Just what happens is sometimes you get those optimistic positions going on and typically it's best to just, okay, pick up my levels and look for the right trade. And so far we've had that optimistic bounce in all risk assets, cryptos and everything. That's just a simple a trade. Stop me up, prove it wrong and then move on.
- [40:33]
B
No, from a trading point of view I, I understand your point. I mean I don't necessarily agree with you. Depends asset by asset I mean you and I, like I was much more bullish silver when it was in the 70s and I said we're going to get to 100. I still think so, you know, but it's because I'm looking at the momentum trend of what's going on. That's the only difference from a trading point of view, you're right.
- [40:52]
F
Which is how silver works is I had a good friend and colleague I spoke to yesterday, he's had silver in his account for a decade. It sucked. It was just a big Rock finally It went a good 4, 3, 4x and it did nothing. 3, 4, 5x. And you know this is someone who's traded, traded it back in the 70s, 80s. It asked me what I thought. I said we agreed it's not going to be different. If you've been long it like a lot of us have whenever those of us loved, loved metals and you took the pain, you got the gain. Do not double down. History says doubling down these levels and buying silver at these levels. My prediction, I'll look at it from the future is silver will put in a high this year that will last maybe a decade if history's a guy.
- [41:32]
B
Well, we'll see. I mean I, I, I, I told you just for those who don't know, my prediction is the silver gold ratio will ultimately end this move somewhere in the 30s. It's in the 50s now. So do we think gold is going to put in a, an all time high here and it's going to revert back or not? If the answer is not then then I'm going to disagree with you. If the answer is gold drops back to 2500, yeah.
- [41:56]
H
Okay.
- [41:57]
B
Then silver does have an enduring high. Do I think that's going to happen? No. But to me that's the more important thing that's going on there now. Why do we care in the bitcoin market about silver? I'll tell you why. It's because silver is alt season literally enormous amounts of speculative money from particularly outside the US Particularly the same people who play in the perp markets are betting in the contract for differences markets on very high leverage on silver. And when it becomes non interesting that's the rotation that, that a lot of people are waiting for. And so that's why I care about it. I don't know if other people think about that. Come on Buzz. I mean you got, you care about the Meme Coin Casino a lot. And you know, I think we got.
- [42:40]
A
To go to Buzz Buzz right now anyways. So good time.
- [42:43]
H
Yeah, yeah, that is good timing. But we do have a, a sponsor today. It's Marketing profit and we have Igor here from Market Profit. But before we get going with our sponsor, just a disclaimer that Mario's company IBC does marketing incubation and investing and sponsors on the show are sponsors working directly with ibc, not necessarily crypto town hall Scott, Dave or myself in particular. So Igor, as we get started here, why don't you test your mic and tell the audience what exactly market profit.
- [43:14]
I
Does with social media, Social copy trading hey, hey, Buzz. Can you guys hear me?
- [43:20]
H
Loud and clear.
- [43:21]
I
All right, well, first of all, thanks for having me on. Great to see you again. And Scott, and you know everybody that I know on the spaces, let me tell you what market profit does. So we are a financial technology company and we process X data, them crypto related tweets, actually some stock related tweets as well, speaking of tokenization. But we'll focus on crypto and we, the unique part about what we do is we, we score crypto Twitter accounts that make posts about crypto prices objectively and quantitatively. And by doing that, we treat them as traders and we don't care about social metrics, we don't care about popularity. It's all about just like on Wall street where I grew up. Like many of the speakers here, it's about performance. You either make money or lose money. And you know, how did you make it? That's how we score accounts by taking that approach. What, what winds up happening is you find people and they're on our website and it's free to go to www.marketprofit.com. profit is P R O P H I T. We show leaderboards for thousands of cryptos and what you'll find if you go to our bitcoin page, just type in a ticker, right? Btc you'll find the top three predictors on crypto Twitter and you'll be surprised as who they may be. They, they, they are, they're small accounts, complete unknowns, but they crush it with, you know, speaking about production markets. You know, they're predicting, they're commenting, they're posting, they're putting out sentiment, which we have as well, free sentiment signals. And those accounts are small. Sometimes they're huge too by the way. You know, there are really big, you know, crypto Twitter accounts that are, that crush it, right? For example, give a shout out to Scott, who I know, look him up and he crushes it on crypto Twitter and he is a big account. However, however there are a lot of small accounts and using our unique approach, we surface them, we identify them, we call them out. There are leaderboards and, and, and what we're doing is providing a lot of content and you know, kind of a, you know, an arrow as to where you can find potential alpha as you do research. It's not always the people with the biggest microphone. That is what we do our mission. By doing that, we provide trust to social media. Right. Trust is so important in financial market, any financial market. Who do you trust? How do you trust? Right. And given, you know, all the activity and, you know, and the rug poles and, and, you know, and the volatility too, how do you find the people you trust? So we surface, you know, the small accounts as well, and we don't do it. The, the analytics do it right. You know, the, the, the, the stats speak for themselves. Buzz.
- [46:56]
H
I, the first time I went to the Market Profit website, I, I was quite surprised by the sheer amount of data there. Like, for example, my account. I'm not somebody that's posting signals or anything like that on a daily basis, but I did have a profile there. It was analyzing my tweets and kind of giving me a score of how I was, how much of a market profit I was. And I was surprised. I was doing better than I thought. Igor.
- [47:25]
I
Yeah, you are actually, you know, you absolutely are. Right? And by the way, I'm going to give a call to action after this call right now. Look yourself up. If you post, look somebody, you follow who you post. Check them out. A lot of people immediately do that. That is the first reaction. We're a search engine. You know, we're like the, you know, as an analogy, we're like the morning star, right? Ratings. When you, when you look at who to invest in a mutual fund or where do you place your money, where do you put a bet on, right? Where do you allocate your capital? Who do you trust? And you got to look up their track record, their ratings. If you're, if you're a hedge fund manager and you're raising money, you show a track record to institutional investors. When you're copy trading people, you look them up on a leaderboard on exchange. We are a leaderboard, right? For crypto Twitter. We have all the stats. It's free. You know, P L like reports, track records for crypto Twitter accounts. How do they do. Where do they crush it? Where. Where are they not doing so well? It doesn't matter. And you know, we also show accounts that don't do so well for whatever reason, right? We, we can't. Well, that's.
- [48:41]
H
Igor. That, that's the way that I first used it when I first went to Market Profit. And for people who do want to go to the website, I have pinned up.
- [48:50]
I
What did you say? Post.
- [48:51]
H
I've pinned up a post in the NASA from Market Profit. So anybody can click the Market Profit account and follow the official links there. But I first went to the site and what I did is I looked up some of my friends on crypto Twitter to Make fun of them and to find out what their potential P L was with the calls that they were making on Twitter. So I did find that to be quite an amusing way to first go to the website. But that isn't exactly how you, a user can use it to the fullest extent. Right. Maybe describe a little bit how a user could show up to the website and use it to actually create value for themselves beyond just looking at some very interesting data.
- [49:37]
I
Absolutely. So now, now let's go beyond the data. So obviously when you're doing research, right, you see who to follow. Where do you allocate your capital? Have them all. Right. That's step one. That's three. That's all on our website. Look up any handle and that you know. And if you want to bet on them, we allow you to do that. And I'll talk about social media copy trading. Right. Our application that is live. So now let's talk about copy trading. Right. And this is for everybody really, but especially retail copy trading is on most exchanges and it's the best way or the most popular way that retail investors, you know, allocate capital. They copy trade, you know, professional traders with track records. Great. That's a retail version of a hedge fund manager. Okay. We allow uniquely to provide, to potentially get alpha, any user to copy trade an X account. Right. You can actually copy trade the signals that our AI generates from their predictions. Right. And, and allocate your capital. Right. Now the way it works is you just go, you have the blue copy trade button and then you sign up. Right. And we're giving it away for free. Right. So there's going to be a free code. I'll mention in a second. We are not an exchange. Okay. So we are a smart execution engine. You have to currently have an account with Binance, Bybit or Metc. And then obviously, you know, any exchanges that we're going to integrate later. So let us know what exchange you want. Right. You, you have them in account there and then you provide us, you know, your API keys. Right. Read only because, you know, we have to be able to execute orders in your wallet. Great. You put in the amount you want to bet on or copy trade in a positive way on an X account and then you subscribe and we'll give it away for free. And what it does, and this happens all the time. There are quantitative bots that people write even on exchanges or for themselves or privately. Right. Even at a hedge fund.
- [51:57]
H
Right.
- [51:57]
I
Quantitative hedge funds execute based on signal. We you can think of, we are a Quantitative hedge fund, a very, you know, kind of unique one, but we allow you to bet on X accounts. Now there's another feature, okay, which is you can inverse copy trade a negative scored account too. And, you know, it's not to make fun of it. There's alpha there, right. Those accounts are negative for a variety of reasons, right? We don't, we score all kinds of accounts. We don't know who they are. Again, the money, the stats, the objective scores speak for themselves, but we let you know who they are. All right, so Emperor's copy them. So if they, if there's a positive signal, we go short or, or sell. If there's a negative signal, we reverse it and you get the negative of their negative returns.
- [52:54]
F
So.
- [52:54]
I
So that feature is unique and typically actually does not exist in real trade or copy trading, but on, on our platform, market profit, we enable it because, you know, we have the stats, so why not also and, you know, get extra alpha. We have one final feature. You can actually copy any crypto. So let's say you just want to kind of, in a robotic, quantitative way, copy trade. We call it Bitcoin or a meme, coin, anything. That's another feature. What does that mean? Well, there we actually go deep right into, you know, our stats, right? We'll. We don't show all of them for free. We show a lot of data, Buzz, like you said, we have a lot of free data, right, for research, discovery, and also alpha. And there we. We get more than three accounts, right? And if any one of them that, you know, post a prediction, a signal, sentiment, you know, long, short, bullish, bearish. On Bitcoin, we're trading on all those signals. So think of that as the best Bitcoin traders in the world, right? Again, their X accounts are managing your money. That is a, A team of. It's a quantitative hedge fund in your pocket. So that's another feature we have. And I've been on, you know, a couple roundtable shows with you, Buzz, and after this, I'll post the recordings of the shows where I show live results of copy trading, X accounts, inverse copy trading, copying coins. And I can tell you, and I show screenshots on Bybit, who happens to be one of, one of our partners, it crushes it, right? The stats, the execution is, is, you know, really amazing, right, because there's a lot of information that we surface and it's predictive and I can tell you, and we all live through. Speaking of volatility, Dave, what you mentioned, we, you know, we went through like an extraordinarily volatile time. And it was, and I'll, you can see the screenshots, right. I'll post it afterwards. It was nailing tops and bottoms, long, short and especially on the short side as well. And as everybody knows, or many people may not know, it's really hard to be a, you know, a short seller, trader and, and you know, nail markets, right. Very hard. But it was very bounced. Right. And the win loss ratios were really, really excellent. You know, we made money, right? Copy trading made money, for example, on Bitcoin itself through the massive volatility that we experience. And I agree with Dave, right. I think we're just going to be in a really choppy market and retail gets wrecked in volatility. Right. So we are giving hedge fund institutional quality execution to the masses for free. Right. So yeah, that's, that's copy trading. And again, you can copy.
- [56:15]
H
Igor, one thing, one thing I just wanted to mention that I did for, for you in the audience is a few days ago when you were on the Round Table show, you, you shared your screen and did a really great in depth demo.
- [56:28]
I
Yeah.
- [56:28]
H
Of how all of these features work. So what I've done for, for the audience who's tuning in is I've pinned that video up into the top of the space here. So if anybody wants to follow along with a video, I, I would say after this, that would be an excellent video to watch where you can see Igor on screen, go through exactly how the product works.
- [56:50]
I
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And for anybody, even afterwards, right, ping me, right? And we can do like a, a very detailed walkthrough of the platform. Anybody, right, you know, happy to go through that. The other thing. So let me give you the free code, right. Because I want people to subscribe and try it. So the code is MP_100LWP. Okay, that's a free code.
- [57:24]
H
So just Igor, can I, can I ask you if there are one. If there's one W or two? Two. Because the code that I have has two W's.
- [57:33]
I
Yeah, sorry, yeah, that was, it's lwp. Lwp. That's the code. Got it.
- [57:39]
H
So M L, M L E. But the full code that I'm going to read out for, for the, the listeners who are tuning in, if you go to the market profit website, the free code that you can use is MP_100.
- [57:56]
I
L w p. Correct. That's correct. And I could even drop the code, I think. Well, yeah, that's the code. So, so yeah, Anybody, by the way, you know, a lot of users that we call out every day, everybody wants to be on the leaderboard. It's hard to become a big account and it's hard to surface, right? Alpha. In fact, I saw a lot of comments buzz to your roundtable posts where people are like, how do we discover? How do I get discovered? Right? It is so hard. We are your, your brain, you know, your prowess, your, your good calls. That's what gets you discovered. We just have a platform that calls you out. It is so hard to make it to the leaderboard, right? So, yeah, that's what. That's. That's another thing that we do, by the way, follow market profit at market profit. P R O P H I T. And you know, we call out every day who nailed some call on some crypto or meme coin long or short. That's also a discovery tool too. There we are constantly, like identifying people and some of them go bananas. So, like, oh my God, you know, I'm a market prophet, right? You know, maybe that's the new word for Kol. You're a market prophet. And they're grateful, right? They're like, wow. And then their followers are, are, you know, supporting them, saying, yeah, this guy nails it. I can't believe an AI smart engine found me. So, you know, go there to find and discover, right? Who's nailing different calls on different crypto. We also post real time, you know, signals, right? What's bullish, what's bearish, what's buzzing. Talk about the fear greed index. We have two fear greed indices for a variety of coins. One is the crowd sentiment, which is your normal, you know, kind of sentiment. And then we have smart money like Scott Melker or like the number one guy for Bitcoin, you know, on our site. And there that's all the smart money signal. So we have two signals, and maybe they agree and maybe they disagree. And when they do, you know, the smart money is picking those tops and bottoms, which is what we execute on, right? We're executing based on smart money.
- [60:25]
H
Igor, as we we wrap up here, I do want to remind the audience about the code. So what I've done for the audience is I've pinned up the market profit profile in the nest. There you can access the video where Igor on screen will walk you through exactly how to use the product. And you'll also be able to access the official link to the website to go to the market profit website when you're there. Igor has generously offered a free code to Sign up. This code is MP_100L and if you don't want to write that down, you could also DM the market profit account and Igor and he would be happy to assist in, in onboarding you. Igor, how is that as a summary for what people can do today to help you out?
- [61:15]
I
Yeah, listen, that, that was great buzz as always. But yeah, I'll just end here. Anybody can just ping me, DM me, reach out and we can do a bigger walkthrough for all you, for you, for your community. You know, after this call I'll also pin that recording that's pinned to the top of the space on my pen so you can watch the recording and the screenshots and all that. But definitely subscribe, copytrade, help you get out.
- [61:48]
H
Wonderful. Well, Igor, it's always a pleasure speaking with you. I love how passionate you are. I love the amount of sheer data that you're looking at with, with AI and I hope that I get to talk with you again soon because I like going to the market profit website to check out how I'm doing, check out how my friends are doing, maybe make fun of them, maybe give them a pat on the back for making some good calls. But it's a great product and I encourage people to go check it out on their website. So with that I hope everybody has a great day, that we have a green day. And Igor, any final words here?
- [62:22]
I
Yeah, so first of all, thank you and yeah, I wish everybody like alpha and you know, with our platform and you know, and to be for small accounts especially to recognize that you know, they are smart and our analytics discover and surface a lot of creators right in the world of AI.
- [62:51]
H
Their market profits, definitely, definitely all market profits. Well, thank you folks for tuning in. Thank you Igor for bringing us this segment and everyone have a great day. Crypto Town hall will be back again tomorrow at 10:15am Eastern Time with Dave and Scott. So see you then. Take care.
- [63:08]
I
Thank you.