Market MELTDOWN: BTC $102K, Altcoins Getting Crushed | CryptoTownHall

Summary

The Wolf Of All Streets – CryptoTownHall: Market MELTDOWN: BTC $102K, Altcoins Getting Crushed

Date: November 4, 2025
Host: Scott Melker

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Overview

This episode zeroes in on the sharp sell-off in crypto markets, with Bitcoin testing $102K and altcoins reeling. Scott Melker and a rotating expert panel dissect causes for the downturn, debunk rumors, evaluate macro and technical trends, and debate the long-term outlook for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and privacy coins. The discussion broadens to regulatory shifts, the evolving role of banks in crypto custody, and the future of decentralized versus institutionalized finance.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Market Meltdown: Is This Capitulation?

• Rumors, Liquidations, and FUD
  • Panelists explore whether this sell-off is the "capitulation event" needed to mark a market bottom.
  • Discussion of rumors regarding Wintermute and MEXC blowing up; skepticism on these being true accelerants for the crash.
  • “The math doesn’t add up...the total magnitude of the loss is going to be measured in the millions, not billions.” (Dave, 05:14)
  • FUD (“fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) is highlighted as a recurring market driver, not actual insolvency crises this time.
• Trading Sentiment and Technical Signals
  • Scott underscores cyclical sentiment extremes: “At the top everyone’s crazy and at the bottom everyone’s crazy and in between…” (Dave, 07:03)
  • Technical analysis: Bitcoin tapping the 50 weekly MA—a key line in the sand for traders (06:47).
  • “You play poker. If you can’t see who the fish is at the table, you’re the fish.” (Panelist, 03:50)

2. Rumors Around Wintermute & MEXC

• Wintermute
  • Discussion of rumored losses. Panel doubts Wintermute could be so overleveraged as to drive market-wide panic; automatic deleveraging cited as a potential risk but not likely of market-moving scale (04:30–05:14).
• MEXC Exchange
  • Debunking of insolvency rumors. MEXC’s proof-of-reserves seen as reliable, derivatives market structure unlikely to result in FTX-type collapse (07:03).

3. Altcoin Panic & Privacy Coin Surges

• Unusual Moves in Privacy Coins
  • Panel highlights surges in Zcash and Dash; possible links to money laundering or a “narrative pump” (14:06–16:35).
  • “If a part of the demand surge is people who want privacy in their moving positions...they need to be careful...” (JW, 17:05)
  • Possible avoidance of Monero after a recent 51% attack attempt (17:53).
• Alts vs. Bitcoin: Fundamentals & Utility
  • Skepticism that altcoin price action matches utility: “There will never be enough ‘usage’ of Ethereum to justify how far the price has come before that usage was adopted...” (Scott, 28:15)
  • Discussion of stablecoins commoditizing the value proposition for ETH and other chains (25:11–30:03).

4. Regulation, Token Economics, and the Path Ahead

• Long-Term, Value-Driven Investment
  • Panelists stress focusing on protocol fundamentals, number of developers, and long-term viability (11:13).
  • Regulatory evolution: The coming requirement for token issuers to be transparent about token economics (“meta trend”) will eventually filter out weak projects (13:35).
• Quotes:
  • “Anything I buy for the long term, I want to actually know that there’s a long-term path to value for holders.” (Dave, 13:35)

5. Fiat, Peer-to-Peer Ideals, and System Integration

• Debate: Is Crypto Still Peer-to-Peer?
  • Skepticism that true P2P reality has arrived. Early bitcoin mining and present-day market are both shaped by fiat inflows and institutional structures (36:39–39:20).
  • “Look, Satoshi was wrong. If you take him at his word with the first 50-coin mine in 09, it’s not peer-to-peer. It will be.” (Mark, 38:13)
  • The need for broader asset distribution as Bitcoin matures and integrates into global finance—eventually making “cypherpunks” a wealthy minority (39:48–42:33).

6. Institutionalization: Big Banks and Bitcoin Custody

• The Coming Era of Institutional Crypto
  • Discussion spurred by Michael Saylor’s remarks about big banks offering bitcoin in 2026.
  • The “real juice” is using BTC as pristine collateral, which could unlock mass demand and set the stage for the kind of re-rating equities saw after the 1988 rule changes (31:01–33:44).
  • “As it [Bitcoin] gets into the financial system, it allows a lot more money to be put into the asset from people who are constrained [now].” (Dave, 32:37)

7. Ethereum, Solana, and the Future of Stablecoins

• Ethereum’s Narrative & Competitive Threats
  • Regulatory favor for Ethereum is waning as Solana and other chains catch up in both technology and institutional recognition (27:19).
  • Concerns that stablecoins may increasingly migrate to cheaper, faster chains, diminishing ETH’s “economic rent” (25:50).
• The Stablecoin Future
  • Mass adoption of stablecoins will hinge on making chain/coin choice invisible to users; the future is fully interoperable and abstracted systems (28:15–30:03).

8. Macro, Money Supply, and Cycles

• Historical Precedent vs. Today’s Context
  • “This time is different” narratives pushed back against, but with acknowledgement of unique monetary and regulatory conditions (20:31–22:59).
  • Adjusting cycle charts for the massive dilution in dollar supply changes what counts as a “bottom.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Market Psychology:
  • “Buy when others are fearful, sell when others are greedy every time.” (Dave, 05:14)
• On Yield Chasing:
  • “If you’re still looking for yield without knowing where the yield is coming from at this point, you have to be dumb as a rock…” (Dave, 03:20)
• On Privacy Coin Pumps:
  • “The challenge with this [Zcash] project is the devs wanted perfect code, perfect cryptography... and they had shit UX for seven years so nobody used it.” (JW, 15:35)
• On Token Fundamentals:
  • “In the future, tokens with actual value propositions will shine, the rest will be exposed.” (Dave, 13:35)
• On Macro Cycles & Money Printing:
  • “You need to look at the context... with the fiscal dominance of what’s going on... nothing stops this train.” (Dave referencing Lyn Alden, 21:59)
• On Institutional Adoption:
  • “When BTC is adopted as pristine collateral by the Basel accounting rules... all bets are off.” (Dave, 31:21)
• On Peer-to-Peer Limitations:
  • “For settlement finality... it is unparalleled. But if everyone tried to use BTC directly, the math doesn’t work.” (Dave, 39:48)
• On Stablecoins/Commoditization:
  • “Commodity underpinnings are never going to make you incredibly rich.” (Dave, 25:50)
• On Banks/Custody:
  • “Banks have all the big buildings in cities for a reason... they’ve benefited from decades of easy money and financialization. That’s getting unwound.” (Dave, 50:24)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Market Meltdown & Capitulation: 02:07–07:03
• Wintermute & MEXC Rumors Analyzed: 03:55–08:40
• Privacy Coins & On-chain Flows: 14:06–19:15
• Long-Term Crypto Strategy: 10:19–13:41
• Macro, Technicals, and Money Supply: 19:15–22:59
• Stablecoins, Ethereum, and Chain Wars: 24:31–30:03
• Institutionalization & System Integration: 30:08–33:44
• Fiat and Peer-to-Peer Ideals: 36:04–42:33
• Saylor, Bitcoin Credit Markets: 45:39–47:36

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Panel Dynamics & Closing Thoughts

The episode is collaboratively analytical, with Dave and Scott often aligned but inviting challenge from the entire panel. There’s a clear emphasis on separating signal from noise, debunking surface-level FUD, and zooming out to consider economic and regulatory mega-trends shaping crypto’s evolution. The tone is skeptical of easy narratives—even canonical ones like the “four-year cycle”—while bullish on the future utility and institutional integration of crypto.

“As it gets into the financial system, it allows a lot more money to be put into the asset...” — Dave (32:37)

“Buy when others are fearful, sell when others are greedy…” — Dave (05:14)

“There’s gotta be people building platforms that make all of them completely interoperable... the user just hits a button and says, I want to do something with USD.” — Scott (28:15)

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Final Takeaways

• The sell-off is more psychological and structural than caused by any one failed entity.
• Privacy coin pumps likely fueled by narratives and opportunism, not widespread laundering or fundamental shifts.
• Long-term investment strategies are favored over speculation; regulatory clarity will reward fundamentally-sound projects.
• Bitcoin’s future lies not solely as "people’s money," but as integrated financial collateral—symbiotically tied to institutional finance.
• Ethereum and other altcoins face a future of commoditization and chain competition; utility has yet to catch up to speculative valuation.
• The only real certainty: the crypto market’s emotional loop will always turn, and “fearful” times often mark the best opportunity for long-term conviction buyers.

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Transcript

[A]

Dave, Till Scott comes up, just a question for the group. Cheney dying and Mandami getting elected. Is there any relation. Is that related in any way?

[B]

I certainly don't know.

[A]

I mean, you know, the cosmic were, you know, whisper.

[B]

No, I mean, Mamdani getting elected is merely the signal of the. Of reaping what you sow in terms of monetary policy and policies for decades that prioritize capital over labor and have made the youth of our country turned their brains to mush, and there's just no other way around it. I mean, New York is going to suffer. And it's sad because I was literally just there this weekend and, you know, I. I'm a New Yorker at heart. Even though I'm in Florida, I. I just don't want to go there.

[A]

Were you here for the marathon, Dave?

[B]

Yeah, I was. I was in New York during the marathon.

[A]

Wasn't that. I was too. I. And it's a. It's a great day. And to your point, like, it's still a great city for those events. Nothing like it. And then when you. When you sort of pull up the covers, you're right, Mondame. It's manifesting.

[C]

Ask you to use your phone.

[B]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting, though, I mean, in terms of. From a Bitcoin perspective. We in bitcoin are all here.

[D]

Matthew, please mute your mic. Matthew, we can hear you talking. Please mute your mic. I can't. Okay, I tried.

[B]

Go ahead. I was going to say, as Bitcoiners, the vast majority of people who listen to this believe that profligate spending and runaway fiat money has enabled all sorts of really bad things. Some of those bad things are what people like Mamdani campaigns about, except what he wants to do. And what. What. What that movement is, is the polar opposite of what we want. What he wants is more government, more spending, more everything. Make everybody dependent. What we want is freedom and the ability to actually restrain government because we all understand that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And when you give it all to the government, bad shit happens.

[D]

By the way, just as a caveat, everyone, apparently, in both sides of the government, debt is in power, wants more spending. But go ahead. And that's not.

[B]

Did I say Democrat?

[E]

No, no, no.

[D]

I'm just, you know, Mamdani obviously is a extreme example on one side, but. But spend, baby, spend. Grow our way out of it just means print our way out of it, so.

[B]

Oh, no doubt, no doubt. I mean, it's not a political thing. Look, at the end of the day, you know, Our political system is, is hosed because we have extremes and extremes both. There are statists who want the government to run a military, you know, on the military side and their status who want the government to control the society. And most of what we say is an opt out. But there is there, there, there are cadres and we could go through that. I don't think that's what we want to talk about today. We want to talk about today is, is there, is this sell off, is this the capitulation sell off that people have been waiting for? And if so, then the, you know, bullish divergence of what we're seeing today look feels, feels like a tradable bottom being formed.

[D]

Agree.

[B]

And that is important. I've seen all sorts of stories and I've been trying to ask people and this is the perfect time to know if anyone's hearing anything. All sorts of stories of liquidations. There's rumors about Wintermute and there's rumors about Mexc. And then there's some stupid, shitty stablecoin which was giving people a ton of yield that was a hundredth of the size of Terra Luna. And people talking about that one. I don't want to glorify it. The fact that there are people who are still looking for yield without knowing where the yield is coming from at this point, you know, you have to be dumb as a rock and, or, and, or ignorant to continue to fall for that crap.

[D]

Yeah, you play poker. If you can't see who the fish is at the table, you're the fish.

[B]

Oh yeah, absolutely. 100%. And people, people are like that and it's crazy. But, but let's, we should dive in here. So here's my 2. Wintermute. I don't know anything about the situation. I don't know, you know, whether lawsuit, no lawsuit, big losses, no losses, etc. What I know is unless something really changed at Wintermute, there's no way that they were massively long. Now, if they're not massively long and they were basically hedged, then any liquidation of assets that they have to limited to the loss.

[D]

Yeah, it seems like that was fun. But just to be clear, I think that the claim was that because of automatic deleverage leveraging, even if they were properly hedged, that they could have blown up. I'm not saying that did happen at all.

[B]

No, no, but.

[D]

Right. We all know that. We all know that if you're hedged well, but a platform unwinds your position. You can't be hedged.

[B]

I get you. And even if that is true, the size of the automatic deleveraging is what would be the absolute largest amount they could have been out of balance?

[D]

I mean, the wallets, they showed the wallet people were making these claims while also showing the wallets that were only down like, you know, 60. I don't, I don't want to quote the numbers wrong, but it was like maybe a $600 million wallet that was down to like 560. That's not a blow up.

[B]

Yeah, right, but that's my point. My point is that the total magnitude of the loss is going to be measured in the millions, not billions. And so measured in the millions loss. And even if you had to unwind, the entire company would not create the kind of selling pressure and waves that we've seen. It's just, it's, it's people, it's others looking at this and saying, oh, oh my God, this is ftx Re. You know, part two is the same thing is going to happen and selling. My guess is a lot of short positions have been put on during this period of time and a lot of people dumped not knowing what the hell's going on because the magnitude of the size, it just doesn't, the math doesn't add up. And when the math doesn't add up, I always think that you want to be on the other side of it. Now it doesn't mean that it doesn't change Sentiment doesn't mean we're not fear. But I will go back to buy when others are fearful, sell when others are greedy every time. So that's Wintermute.

[D]

But Dave, this is how ranges trade. I'll let you go on to Mexc, but I was pretty vocal at 126 when it kind of failed to break that we had overbought conditions, mass FOMO and euphoria straight to 150, that we would probably range 100 to 125. I said it countless times, here we are at 100 and now it's the same sentiment like always with humans. If you're at 100 and you're at support, by the way, we just tapped the 50 ma on the weekly, which is like a very definitive line in the sand for technical analysts and bounced a little bit. But this is the same sentiment on the other side, which is that you get to support and we gotta go way down. Right. And it's just a range. It's just a range.

[B]

We're violently in agreement. We are totally. Look, you and I, yes, yes, unfortunately, we make terrible, you know, terrible podcasts because, you know, we agree with each other. I'm just trying to point out and debunk FUD to on the other side.

[D]

Yeah, onto Mexc.

[B]

Right. So MEXC is an exchange and that literally prides itself on proof of reserves. And I have seen nothing that suggests that their proof of reserves are lies. So therefore, yeah, they could, you know, obviously any exchange could go down, but if there are proof of reserves and they have segregated customer spot, then there's no issue there. I've heard lots of, and lots of accusations that on the derivative side they may have issues, but once again, people need to remember derivatives exchanges are balanced. They have just as many buyers as sellers. And yes, there could be slight delinks, but this is not the same thing as taking people's Bitcoin and Ethereum off their exchange and replacing it with SAM coins, which is what FTX was. Obviously it's also way smaller. So to basically look at those things and say, okay, that's why it's falling is a bunch of horseshit. And I think people should understand that. We use the word FUD very heavily here for fear, uncertainty and doubt. People trying to push markets around. But honestly, I think what you're seeing is exactly what you got to. My punchline first is exactly what you're saying, Scott. And it just, I find it funny almost how predictable humans are that at the top everyone's crazy and at the bottom everyone's crazy and in between. And so I guess we see, I guess we'll see now that the tide is out. But I'm curious, I mean, you know, we got a bunch of people on the panel. Anybody else heard anything to dispute any of this? I mean, Mark, you know, you, you watch this stuff, you've seen a lot of these things. I mean, obviously you, you know, you probably tend to agree with us as well, But I'm curious, you think.

[D]

And after Mark, JW had his hand up. I don't know if you saw that, Dave, but. Go ahead, Mark.

[B]

I see, I see the block. Prof. Yeah, I'm sorry.

[D]

No, no, no problem. Just making sure. Yeah, we know the.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, when Dave, you said that, when you don't see a reason, then you're going to go back to, you know, people are weak or people will sell bottoms and buy tops. And that's true. And then that's also why I'm not a great trader. I'm, I'm more of a in, I won't say investor, but I risk managed because I traded for a bit. I wasn't very good at it. I was good to step away. So I keep pressing to say Ari is not winner mute. Is it a traditional player that got in recently who said I'm out? Is there any market structure feedback from any of the folks like digital asset researcher or Glassnode that has shown unusual behavior? Because if there's not unusual behavior then I agree with you then this is going to persist as long as the negative equity sentiment does. So I do think we could hang out here if equities need a release valve. To your point, if we've exhausted there's no new player who's dumping no new Sam, then yes, this is an entry point for sure.

[D]

Yeah and by the way the S and P on its gap down today and move to the downside before bouncing exactly. I pinned it above but tapped the previous all time high like almost to the penny on the spx. So a lot of obviously fear even with the S and P sort of at highs but simply a support test is not that big a deal. JW you're.

[E]

Hey I'm gonna repeat one of my monsters on this show which is I I don't know anything about short term trading. I think short term trading in equities is mostly noise. Crypto's even noisier believer in the Fisher Black kind of hypothesis of noise trading. But I want to go back to what where Dave started which is the politics and crypto has opt out from the broken nature of government and politics. I'm more I I I I I look long term in crypto and what I've learned recently is that I need to do a better job of practicing what I preach. God I wish I could I instead of all the meme coins and and you know dog things I invested in because they look cool. I wish I'd have done more to live up to my belief that it's long term, it's infrastructure, it's deepen. I serve on the zcash foundation board and I didn't do as well in the Thousand X Zach run up this year as I could have if I hadn't wasted my money on Pepe and all this dog. I'm going to go back and reread Balaji's Network State. I'm going to go back and reread everything Massari has ever done on Deepin. I'm going to think about the projects that'll be here in 10 years and I'm going to do more of this strategy of you know, looking at how many devs are working on the project, do they make sense? In the thesis of Balaji's vision and Naval's vision for the future crypto, Does Vasari show a project that works? Okay, I'm gonna buy some tokens, put it in cold storage and I'll come back in 10 years and look for a couple of miracles in there. That's all I got.

[D]

Jw, jw, don't forget to buy a little bitcoin while you're at that.

[E]

Yeah, of course, Bitcoin and ETH because of the thesis. Yeah, but bitcoin, how many devs are working on the protocol? That's good for Bitcoin and ETH and Solana. That's good for some deep end projects. Some are newer. I still don't know if filecoin is going to give AWS a run for their money, but I sure hope so, especially after AWS's recent failure. And I'm still betting on Filecoin over the next 10 years because those devs are very smart. Even though the price.

[D]

I haven't heard filecoin in a very long time. I haven't heard filecoin in a long time.

[E]

It's not great for trading. The devs are there, the infrastructure there. Smart people are still working on it.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, look, the point. Someone asked me the point and jw, since you're here, I think that you're perfect to actually comment on this on X. Someone asked me a point about the Clarity act and blah blah blah. And my point on this is this is the meta trend that. The meta trend is that there will be rules written that effectively force issuers to explain token economics and you know, for, for their tokens as. As they're listed and that those rules will effectively end up meaning that tokens that do have value propositions that go to the token holders will shine and the ones that don't will be exposed. That's going to take years. It's not going to happen immediately. But that's been my thesis as we enter this time. So anything I buy for the long term, I want to actually know what there's. That there's a long term path to value for holders. We clearly have not been like that. That's sort of the antithesis of where crypto was, looking back five years or seven years, but I think looking forward five to seven years, that will be the antithesis. I'm curious if you think I'm on drugs or if you believe that what I just said makes sense.

[E]

Well, both could be true, but I don't know about the first, but the latter, Yes, I think it makes sense, Dave. That's where we're headed for sure. And it creates opportunities right now because those of us who spend some time with dpi, llama, with Messari kind of stuff have an advantage. That advantage is going to wear away as the, as the mantoid disclosure kicks in, hopefully in a reasonable way.

[D]

And I see your hand up.

[F]

Yeah, I joined a bit late but I think it was Mark that was talking about seeing some like unusual stuff in the market. I, I think there's something really unusual going on right now, but it's something that I've seen over multiple cycles and that is the privacy coins like Dash and zcash having these runs and what that indicates is people are washing their money. Now previous cycles when this happened and we saw these privacy coins ripping, it was people washing their money and getting out of the market. Now I'm not saying that that's what's happening right now, but there is a lot of people that are pumping money into Dash and zcash and other privacy coins right now. So I'm just curious what your guys thoughts on that.

[D]

Is my, my take on it and this is kind of sitting at random dinners and people telling me and I don't know who, how, but I think in my opinion that the zcash run is a result of a few people with large influence getting together and collectively saying hey, we can form a narrative and pump this thing and that Dash and others are following. I don't know that there's something fundamental there. I'm not saying there's anything untoward, but I think that it's moving because of, you know, social media pushing and sentiment more than because something fundamentally is happening. But I would love to be proven wrong.

[E]

Well, I don't know the reason either why it's pumping and you're on the foundation. Yeah, probably some narrative stuff. I do know some cool stuff we're doing. Probably the thing that's most useful to retail is that look, this project, the challenge with this project is the devs wanted perfect code, perfect cryptography. To their credit, they wanted PhD level uncrackable cryptography and they had shit UX for like seven years so nobody used it. Finally we've gotten around to good ux. Dashi Wallet is cool. It's really easy to use and it connects to near intents so you can pretty easily swap from Zack to other stuff for whatever reason you want to swap into Zack. So Zashi Wallet's probably helping us but I'm not claiming that this is a purely foundational narrative or anything. The pump could be partly, you know, based on what most pumps are about. I don't know. But Zashi is cool and we're Devon it up over here.

[D]

Yeah. I would just say, like, when you start to see the whole sector move, I mean, this is how crypto cycles happen. Right. We all know, like, you had NFT Summer and DeFi summer and Metaverse fall and all these things. So one of them catches a bid and then the other ones follow because there's a narrative, and then generally you see a drawdown and we move on to the next hot thing. Right. So I'm not saying that there's nothing fundamentally happening. I'm not making that claim at all. You just don't generally see 10 to 15 X's on accident. Yeah, no.

[E]

I mean, who knows that's possible. One thing, though. If a part of the demand surge is people who want privacy in their moving positions, if that's the issue, they need to be careful because you, you know, the only way Zec works for privacy is if you hold for a while. You need some time between going into Zach and going out of Zach, so you don't have time correlation on the front end and the back end, that. That's still the case. You're shielded while you're shielded. But on the way in and the way out, you need to make sure there's no correlations, which usually means holding.

[D]

Has Monero moved. Has jaded as Monero moved?

[E]

A little bit, yeah. But not the same. Not the same pump right.

[D]

Now I would think that if to Panos, his point like this was people washing their money or the market, that we would see major movement on Monero as well. Did.

[F]

Yeah, I. I would think so. But didn't Monero just get like 51% attacked or attempted? Wasn't that quite recent?

[D]

That's right. That was not that long ago. Some. Some fund. 51% or something.

[F]

Exactly. So I think I would agree with you, but I think people probably avoiding Monero because of that. And that's why, like, zcash and Dash are really like running. I think that's the privacy coin of choice over Monero, because there's some issues.

[B]

There.

[F]

But who knows? And typically what you see as well, if people are doing this to obfuscate their. Their funds or, you know, to do whatever with take it out or whatever, what happens is these coins start running and people get greedy. So they'll put in some money into it and then they see that, oh, this, this, this is going up. So I'm going to hold my. I've got to hold my money in here for a month anyway just to really protect myself from, from a privacy standpoint. And my money is actually going up in value because people are aping into it. So that, that's, I think that's what I'm seeing right now. But I just, again, I don't know whether it's people trying to exit or they just want to maybe, maybe they're entering and they want to obfuscate and then pull it out and then go into other assets. I have no idea. But it is interesting seeing these coins like Dash and zcash making these runs.

[D]

Sorry, my, my mike not not working particularly well. So I think we kind of talked that one out. We were talking markets and I don't know that everybody was able to offer their opinion of where we're at. I think that's what most people are still kind of eager to hear about at this moment. We've got Bitcoin at 104,258. It did drop below, like I said, the weekly 50mA. That's something that has only been tested since 2023 as support held each and every time throughout bull markets. And just I was posting this before, not to scare people, but every time. And Dave will remind us that four data points is not particularly relevant, but there's been four times in history that bitcoin has squarely broken below the 50 ma on the weekly. And every single time it has gone down to touch the 200 ma on the weekly. The 200 ma is currently sitting at 55, 30,000 and rising. So I think, ask yourself, do you think that, you know, if Bitcoin drops below 100 and starts closing candles there, 55k is likely. Or maybe if this is probably a tradable bottom, as Dave said, I was showing that kind of. To laugh at it. I don't think we're going to 55k. I think most people here probably agree.

[B]

Well, you need to look at what was happening at the times, right. You know, in all cases, there's two points to be made. One, in all the cases before, when the high, when it came down off the high to go down there, it was with velocity and it was entering a bear market and it was a euphoric high. Right. The high was. Was with significant leverage, with significant, you know, people paying up to get there, lots of fomo. And the high was, well, significantly higher in terms of percentages of the run so, and then the second thing you need to do is understand that Bitcoin really is a referendum on its probability of becoming digital gold. I mean it really is, because that's where people are, that is the vast majority of major holders and new, new money, that's, that's the narrative they've been sold. And when you look at the fundamentals of what's been going on, it's dramatically different. Under Biden, everything that happened and under Trump one, everything that happened was with a government that effectively was saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we, you know, there was, there was all the fud, this is going to get banned. There's going to be, this is going to be that. It's literally the opposite right now. And so, and none of that has been factored in. It doesn't seem to matter. Well, it does matter, but. So you need to make your long term thesis on the basis of what you see and the evidence is very different now than it was in those other cases. That doesn't mean that this time is different because I hate that crap. But the notion that this is happening because it's a four year cycle is literally insane. It's clinically insane. And because the data just, and the math just doesn't go there. So you really do need to look at the context. So the other context you need to look at frankly is money supply and how with the fiscal dominance of what's going on, I mean, you know Lyn Alden's nothing stops this train effectively. You need, you need to look back at over the 200 weeks and see, well, what actually has happened. And the answer is, you know, we have like in those 200 weeks we've had what, 30 to 40% increase in the number of dollars in circulation, give or take, which means that 55,000, you know, basically that brings you into the 80s to where a reasonable bottom of the range is. If in fact you adjust your chart based on, on that, which I think is probably the most important thing to adjust your chart based off of. I mean you tell me, Scott, am I, am I crazy?

[D]

It makes sense. Context matters. And like I even caveated is that the few data points you love to point out with statistics are meaningless and the four year cycle itself obviously meaningless in that context. So I, I agree with you, I agree with you. And I don't think, listen, I mean the deep four year cycle believers I think would be telling you that we topped, right, because usually the top is between October 20th and November 20th. I haven't dug too deeply into it. But that seems like this would be the time.

[B]

Look, I think we talk about bitcoin and we always phrase our conversations about bitcoin and you and I both believe that bitcoin is different than every other coin out there. And I think when you start talking about alts, I think you have to focus in on Ethereum which is it looks, you know, it looks rather different. Right. You know, for start, you know, not for nothing, you know Ethereum is tracking Bitcoin today but the dynamics there matter and you know, like William was out yesterday talking about how strong the network is. I know today it hit an all time transaction rate I think and the real question is, is Tom Lee's support enough to keep people from the fear and despondency? Because the technicals there. Well, they look a bit different, don't they?

[D]

Yes, absolutely. I would love to get the panel involved here.

[B]

I'd try to bring up bitcoin versus eth to get the panel, of course.

[D]

What do you guys think?

[A]

So yeah, Dave, you thought that bone was enough for us to run in the circle and engage. So the E story why isn't it still engaged or pumping? Because of the stablecoin. Is that just a legislative slog that doesn't have enough zest for the investment community? That's my main question. I thought that was going to make this thing moon with a persistent bid because I do think that the stablecoin game is real, that's a treasuries behind it and that it will get to that 2,3 trillion dollar number in the next, you know, couple years.

[B]

Once again Scott and I have the same opinion on this which is that of all the reasons to buy Eth stable coins which will the issuers will eat will pick what is the most cost effective platform for them to use is probably not going to, you know, redound to eth ETH holders or at least not the extent.

[D]

But great narrative. Can you Great narrative by Tom Lee to hook Wall street early. Right after the genius act though I see a stroke of brilliance as one.

[A]

Of the guys who got hooked then can. Can you go into it? Is it because the it'll literally be like a loss leader? No, that if you want to play.

[B]

But it's like it's like anything else. Pick a business. Doesn't matter what the business is. If you're relying on a utility and the utility is switchable, that is you don't have to stay. You know, the cost of switching is relatively low. It makes that utility a commodity price doesn't mean you can't make money, but it does mean you're not making economic rent. I mean, you're not making exorbitant profits on, on it. Because if Ether was too expensive, you switched to Tron or whatever. Or you do what, what several others are doing, which is build your own blockchain for it. I mean, unfortunately, commodity underpinnings are never going to make you enough incredibly rich. And they can make you money, but they're not going to make you incredibly rich. Right. So that's the, the difference between mooning and not mooning or you know, whatever. I mean, I, I saw. What was it Douglas, I think.

[D]

Was it.

[B]

No.

[D]

Douglas has hand up. Yep.

[B]

Someone had their hand up.

[G]

Yeah, yeah, I did. I think that on the, the Ethereum debate, you know, everyone's talking about how so much so many stable coins are going on Ethereum, but they're not actually being used in the Dexes. Right. Stable coins. Solana, I think that Ethereum has had this traditional sort of view, at least over the last like what, five, five, five years, that, that because the regulators approve of Ethereum, everything should be on Ethereum. And I think that with Galaxy, when they came out and decided they're going to tokenize their NASDAQ shares on Solana, I think that that sort of points out the problems that Ethereum has. No one's going to be using an Ethereum based stablecoin to transfer to $3 from one wallet to another.

[C]

Right.

[G]

They're going to use it on Solana or something that's much cheaper. And Ethereum's obviously 15 transactions per second isn't really going to be used by a consumer. It's going to be Solana where there's maybe 165,000 with the alpenglow upgrade. So I think that there's been this move into Ethereum, but I think it's really based upon how Ethereum was viewed maybe a couple of years ago where that's all the SEC liked. I mean we did, we did an IPO on Ethereum because that's what the, the regulators knew. That's what the SEC knew. But now the SEC knows Solana and I think that the regulators know Solana and I think that, you know, there is going to be a move away from Ethereum towards Solana and I wrote a piece on, or put out a podcast on that today. But, but I'm, I'm convinced that I think that people have run into Ethereum because of regulatory knowledge and they're not actually looking at the how the chain actually performs.

[D]

There's not a single altcoin that value or price reflects its usage or adoption. So to Dave's point about altcoins that we were discussing before is either they continue to be a blend of utility and the ones with utility catch a bid and go up, but in my opinion still that utility could never justify the current prices or you get a full repricing of the sector, which I don't think happens. But like there will never be enough quote unquote usage of Ethereum to justify how far the price has come before that usage was adopted or most altcoins. I'm not even saying that as an indictment. I just like you can't. If you're going to try to value them in the same way you would value a stock. There's none of it makes sense. Make your value on linde and momentum and community and things like that. That all makes a lot of sense. And tale as old as time. There's nothing new there. But yeah, I mean, like to your point and mark on the stablecoin thing, Stablecoins only work in the future, in my opinion. If what chain you're on and what coin you're using eventually gets completely abstracted away, there's gotta be people building platforms that make all of them completely interoperable. And the user on the front end just hits a button and says, I want to do something with USD. And behind the curtain some stablecoin is transacting somewhere on some chain that the platform has identified as the cheapest and fastest way to do it. But there's no world where we get mass stablecoin adoption where you as a user have to like figure out if it's USDT on Solana that you're trying to get to USDC on ETH or something. Right. So it all has to eventually be interoperable and completely abstracted away from the user, in my opinion. And that's what's going to happen. So I think they're commoditized down the.

[B]

Road and that is. That is it. Matt, I see you're here. Yeah.

[H]

Great conversation this morning, guys. Almost as good as the Scott Milker mashup of Sierra, Fleetwood Mac and Luda, which I highly suggest.

[D]

You know, there are some people that remember Matt. You know, there are. That's my former life.

[H]

It's a great mashup. You should go check it out. And almost as good as your sailor interview, by the way. Flowers on that. But speaking of sailor, he did say something the other day and I kind of Wanted to maybe shift the conversation since we got some really smart people in here. He was speaking about the big banks offering Bitcoin in 2026. And I'm thinking, just since we're in the space, what does that look like? I'm imagining they have to probably do OTC buys. Would they be doing that right now? And then my final question would be, how are they going to custody this? How is Brian Moynihan? What's his plan for custody? What is the plan for big banks in 2026 to custody Bitcoin? Thanks guys.

[D]

I'm happy to try to answer, but I would love somebody else to.

[B]

Yeah, I was thinking the same. I was thinking the same thing. I mean the short answer is custody is just. Is the, is the, the, the people storming the beach? The real juice is financing based off of bitcoin and getting bitcoin to be adopted as pristine collateral by the Basel accounting rules. And when that happens, Matt, then all bets are off. Basically what that means is full integration in the financial system, in the Wall street machine, being able to, being able to support multiple businesses. It will massively increase demand. It will do the same thing in terms of valuations as the 1988 changes in the rules did for equities. If you want to look at, if basically anybody who looks at historical charts going back in time forever, like my friend Mike McGlone does, if you look before the 90s and you look at valuations and in the stock market compared to post that they diverge rather dramatically. And there's a reason and I would expect bitcoin to be the same. So that is a massive price driver that people aren't talking about. And the signal that they're all getting into it is telling you an awful lot about what's going to happen. I'll give one nugget as to why. One simple one, which is right now, if you want to offer, if a bank or a broker wants to offer a swap to an institutional customer, institutional customers for the most part don't want to. They don't want to pay a management fee, they don't want to own physical. They don't want to have to deal with the settlement of anything. So they do a lot. There are a lot of institutions who do a lot of their investing via swaps, not perpetual swap, but a swap and they take the counterparty risk of the institutions, et cetera. Right now, if you want to offer a non deliverable forward or a swap on bitcoin, you have to reserve 100% of the capital on the long side and the short side, which basically means you're using all your balance sheet and it's not efficient in other inequities. For example, there'll be a haircut. But more or less you'll get. If you're long and you're short against it, maybe you're using 20% of the capital. So you get five times more capital efficiency. And it could be more than that. It could be 10 times or 20 times. That allows for significantly increased volumes and significantly increase demand to be satisfied. And so that's one of the reasons we talk about. It's all, it's kind of, it's plumbing. And a lot of the people that are listening don't want to listen to all of this or care about it. All you need to know is as it gets into the financial system, it allows a lot more money to be put into the asset from people who are constrained about, you know, the notion of custody or the notion of spot, et cetera. And by the way, it's not. That's not only unique to bitcoin, as I said, it's to all instruments. I hope that helps. Does that, does that make sense to you?

[E]

Yeah, it does.

[H]

That's why I love coming to the spaces in iron sharpens iron.

[B]

So.

[H]

Thank you, Dave. Appreciate that much.

[D]

Gary.

[B]

I see Gary.

[D]

Gary Woods. So we got, we got, we got, we got dueling Gary's. But you're the one with your hand up.

[C]

Yeah, so I put it up in the nest. You can take it back down. But I did put it in there because you guys were talking when I came up in the space about Ethereum specifically. I think that there are some catalyst events that happen in the next month or two. I did post them. At least that's what Grokka is for, is formalized it saying, you know, Fazuka supposedly is going to reduce the fee drain by L2s. So that's an interesting, you know, maybe sell the news kind of event or. And then also the, you know, typical, if people look at charts and things like that, then, you know, this Santa rally at the end of the year, that's something that a lot of people have been looking forward to across all crypto chains. So I think Ethereum still has a play. You know, I think I also, after being in the space 7 years, am more of a bitcoin person than ever before. So, like, the idea of people making their money doing a rotation and then rotating back to bitcoin, I think that that still has a lot of Strength and narrative, regardless of the centralization into DATs or into government coffers and things like that. And then the final topic just, you know, if you do segue to something else is how many people believe that there is a crypto use case as far as a peer to peer when basically free capital in the form of fiat print. Fed print is really what moves the market. As far as price. If you can buy a crypto with a fiat peso dollar euro doesn't matter. Does that actually serve the narrative of it's, it's a, it's a, it's a people's money or it's a parallel money? I don't really think it does in my own opinion. Just because you can print for free if you're on one side of the, the class structure and you have to print for interest if you're going to take a loan or leverage or do anything like that, you know, still using fiat to participate in this economy. So again first is just the Ethereum narrative and the second is, you know, who is, who's still in the space. That is a cypherpunk.

[D]

Anyone?

[A]

Hey Gary, this is Mark. So your, your point is, is the value just coming from the arbitrage or the swap in and out. So therefore it'll never be peer to peer which goes to, you know, Satoshi's opening line or the title of his white paper that hasn't manifest. Is that your point that it's not peer to peer, it's just a, not a wash but money changing systems and gaining value from the different states it exits and enters.

[C]

Well again it's the free launch. So the free launch of any crypto project, whether it's Bitcoin or anything that follows, there was a, there's a founder, there's a launch, there's code that is put into the public space, then public can participate. So the public participating early in the day may have been mining from your laptop or you know, growing, you know, miners and things like that as the technology was necessary to, to harvest a yield effectively right above and above your cost. Now that we are all happy that the price is a hundred thousand or higher. It is partly in large part because Wall street can get money for effectively free. So can Fed or government. Government can basically take, whether it's fines in all of the cloud of what is an ICO and what is a public launch and all the Gensler era, you know, they can, they can basically acquire crypto for free as well through penalties, even CZ's penalty in some Ways I see that as a hit on crypto's valuation. But that is because you can get for free what we all are trying to buy. And we're trying to buy it through our labor or innovation or invention. You know, as a public participant, you know, in this narrative of what is crypto. But you know, at the end of the day, if you have the Fed in, you have a central bank in any, in any government that has a central bank, you can participate, you can basically play for free or close to free or hedged or leveraged. And I just don't believe in the narrative as much as about whether it's bitcoin or anything else, that there's a peer to peer parallel economy.

[A]

Totally. You're dead on. And this is a discussion about. And I do believe that bitcoin is a monolith and difficult to manage for a reason. Because it's not mature enough to allow the engagement on layer twos yet. Its value will come from staying tight and closed like an umbrella and only opening up when it expands and gets broad enough so that it's truly decentralized. It's. Look, Satoshi was wrong. If you take him at his word with the first 50 coin mine in 09, it's not a peer to peer. It will be. So it's time frame. So I, I agree with you. All the history, the past 17 years, nope, not peer to peer. It is a money game, money grab. It's fouling up, it's theft, it's all those things, it's ugly. But below it, bitcoin is growing and maybe there's some other tech that lays on it. So I think that's a discussion it's not often had. People are purists and say it is, it's not peer to peer yet.

[D]

Dave, I know you got thoughts, but. Gary, go ahead. Yeah, Gary, jump in.

[C]

Yeah, I mean I just, I appreciate anybody that has commentary on those particular topics. Otherwise I'll just listen in. It's kind of the same story. You know, you can participate in cryptocurrency and call it a different ticker than a stock or than a gold miner or gold in your vault. But at the end of the day, you know, fiat is what's pushing the price and fiat can be produced for free by governments.

[B]

I mean, look, there are two points here and you have to detangle them. One is 100% I'm in agreement with. Look, as long as we have a printing press and the entire western world has a printing press, there is a need For a financial instrument that is an opt out. Some people argue it's gold, but gold doesn't really work in the digital age without having to trust that there's no fraud in the vaults that you're. There's so many different reasons why gold is not particularly appropriate where Bitcoin is a significant advancement. And so from a fiat protection against fiat point of view, that's the ultimate reason to buy Bitcoin. As far as the peer to peer part of bitcoin, I look at it differently frankly, whether we love them or hate them. But Justin Bonds will tell you that the math says that if everyone tried to use Bitcoin on their own, transferring on the bitcoin network, there's just no, it just the math doesn't work. It's just, it's too slow, it can't handle that. But for settlement finality, for being able to hold your assets in a portable way, to be able to move someplace in a place where people can't take it from you, it is unparalleled. And I think that most people don't care about that. Most people care more about opting out of fiat. And so what you're going to see and what is necessary. If you told me five years ago that bitcoin was going to go to million, you know, when it was trading, you know, below 10,000, you know, six years ago, whatever it was, I would say that along the way it needs to broaden to the point where everybody that matters has some Bitcoin, some way somehow in there as a denominator of their finances. And that means that all the, that the long term holders, the cipher punks basically need to go from being the overwhelming majority of bitcoin holders to a new minority of very rich bitcoin holders. But it has to be a significant minority, which means you have to go through distribution, which means all the things that you're complaining about have to happen. And it literally would have to, because for it to be broadly accepted, it has to be broadly part of the system. And you know, this is something that Saylor has said many times. He tends to try to soft pedal it because he doesn't want to lose his cred within the bitcoin community. Yet those cracks are showing. But the truth is that it needs to be integrated in the system because the system isn't going anywhere. And unless we go to a Mad Max scenario, and if we do, we probably don't have electricity, in which case Bitcoin's going to be cooked anyway. So you need to look at it in terms of its evolution. That's my view. And I think that what we've seen this year in 2025 has been incredibly healthy for the long term and really painful for a lot of people who are looking at bitcoin as a momentum trading vehicle in the short term and sadly, a huge part of our audience.

[D]

The Mad Max. The. The Mad Max is like my favorite analogy. When Balaji was saying, you know, bitcoin goes to a million in the next 90 days, I was like, that's not the world that I want to live in. If that happens, something is blown up so massively. I. I think the. The Sailor conversation is actually worth having because I think his evolution is pro.

[B]

He.

[D]

He leads, right? And he was a very hardcore bitcoin maximalist, obviously from the very beginning. I would say he still is. So. But to your point, he's kind of, let's say there's a divide in the bitcoin community about him right now, a lot of that because of tapping the atm, you know, below the nab that he had. He had discussed before, which is not something, you know, that is. Is expected or accepted on Wall Street. But if you talk to him, you know, there was a time where he said, ethereum will never get an etf, right? He literally said that. Do you remember when the Bitcoin Spot ETFs were approved? He was like, it's insecurity. It'll never get approved. Well, he's one of those rare intelligent people who has strong opinions loosely held, and when confronted with new, compelling evidence, changes his tune. Right? And so I obviously was with him last week in Vegas, and I made a joke to him about altcoins before. Before we went on, and he said to me, scott, I think if we sit down and have a conversation about altcoins, you'll find that I've changed my tune and that my view is more constructive. And in the first answer that he gave in our talk, which is readily available at Money20 20, he talked about how big the crypto industry would become, not just bitcoin, talked about the crypto industry, and he mentioned proof of stake and talked about the tokenization of all things. Those were not a part of his narrative in the past, but he now presented with new information, says, if this industry is going to 10x, these are the things that's going to drive it, not just buying bitcoin. Right? So he's a leader. As I said, I have a feeling there will be a continued divide in the bitcoin maximalist community as there has been with core and knots and big blocks and small blocks and all things of the future where some will follow that trajectory with him and others will remain sort of ardent Bitcoin only period. Regardless of what the evidence shows. But I think he's realized that for him to continue to be successful, and I'm only speaking on what I heard is that you have to acknowledge that this is a full industry and that bitcoin is not a monolith and that the products that people are going to want. We had a 30 minute conversation there just about digital credit. He wasn't selling bitcoin, he wasn't selling microstrategy stocks. He was selling 10% yield that adjusted for taxes and 17% yield that people are going to want instead of getting 4 or 5%. That's diminishing in the zerp environment that's coming. Right. So the two, the narratives are changing across the board even with the big names that you would not anticipate would, would be doing that. Okay, well we got a few people up Matt, go ahead.

[H]

Yeah, I, I think the ways to, to frame it and I've said this for a while and I've learned this from somebody smarter probably in one of your spaces, Scott. But when looking at, at, at crypto, look at it very similar. When we look at metals, we have precious metals and we have industrial metals and there's use cases for each one and then we'll have precious crypto and institutional industrial crypto. So each one's going to serve a different use case. Look, copper has a use case, aluminum, steel, etc. So I think when you break it down in that way it helps a little bit. At least it does for me.

[D]

So you're saying that aluminum is a shitcoin. Got it, go ahead.

[H]

Exactly. That's exactly the takeaway. Love that.

[A]

Yeah. And poor Alcoa is always the first up for earnings letting people know how shitty it is every year, every quarter. The what Saylor's doing, Scott, like you said, on credit it was. He just explores wherever the opportunity is going. I think he's saying yes and you know, and as you said there's a lot, there's a, there's an either or mentality in crypto and bitcoin for sure. What he's, and being a tradfi guy, what he's doing in credit with the preferreds is mind blowing and is you appreciate it and a lot of people here do. He's building out a credit market and pricing credit from equity to Senior secured. And he's basically daring people not to buy a 10% untaxable preferred that has tens of billions of dollars of support below it. It's wild.

[D]

Yeah. Like he said in the conversation, his worst product is 5x over collateralized. And the best product in the rest of the market is 3x over collateralized.

[A]

You have to. An RIA has to have an answer because if their clients find out that there's 10%, meaning you have a million bucks, you'll get 100 grand in your pocket. Yeah, 100 grand goes to you.

[E]

Jesus.

[A]

It's amazing. So I agree. He is really advancing that blurred, not so blurred line now between the hash wall, between bitcoin and then the reality of income that's needed to support people. He's doing a good job of it.

[D]

Gary.

[C]

Yeah, I want to go on what Matt just said also about metals. So, like, you know what I was saying earlier about fiat being able to participate effectively for free and fiat produced by Fed around the world for free. It's the same thing that happened really with Roosevelt and buying up the gold that was available and then repricing it after basically was in the coffers or in the vaults of Fort Knox and during World War II and all these other things. So it's not like it's. Metals are basically the same. Same situation. Stocks are the same situation. What I love about cryptocurrency in general is that it is borderless. It does have a low transfer cost, it does have a relatively low security cost, as long as you know what you're doing and don't lose it, you know, to your keys and phishing attacks and so forth. But, you know, I think that there's a lot of utility in crypto, specifically in Bitcoin or wrapped Bitcoin or other networks that basically move these things around. And I did want to get maybe some feedback from Dave since he does make a lot of these kind of comments that I think are very valid. He said something earlier about collateralization. I think major banks accepting Bitcoin as collateral, very similar to Basel iii, considering gold as the ultimate layer of settlement for anything, and then leveraging on top of that, because it really does come down to belief, whether it's tribal belief, whether it's public market. I think that Wall street is smarter than me, whatever you want to call it, banks are smarter than me because obviously they have the biggest buildings in every big city that I ever see. You know, you can call it an insurance policy if it says, hey, it's got FDIC insurance, well, that's still belief in a policy being paid or value being returned to a loser. As a user, I do like that there are, you know, again, a lot of people don't like central exchanges, but central exchanges, when they do display that they have more tvl, especially in cores, whatever you want to call the cores of crypto than the user base has in TVL on their network, I think that that's really the evolution that's going to happen. I don't really believe, even though everyone's known that Dexes have been around for many, many, many years, the participants that move the market, just like Comex or just like any other major exchange, is centralized, it's not decentralized. So yeah, just commentary about like collateralization or use of Bitcoin and collateral form as, you know, kind of being reinforced by the Tomleys and the Sailors and the, you know, finks of the world. I think that's really the direction we go over the next five years.

[D]

Dave, I think that was addressed to you.

[B]

Yeah, I'm just thinking there's, there's so much to unpack there. I mean, first you talked about. Well, look, the collateral point that I'm making is very specific. It's technical, it's. With it, it's essentially creating more access to demand for Bitcoin. That's what I was really talking about. But you brought up a whole other can of worms. I mean, the entire notion of deposit insurance, for example, is based upon the notion of fractional reserve banking, which in, you know, before the Internet existed was 100% necessary. Because if you were a business anywhere locally, the only people you had to talk to were your local banks. That's it. Because there was no such thing as geographic reach. So you know, you need to be able to get a loan and had the local banks manufacture the ability to borrow or to be able to lend. Well, they took deposits and they said, well, no one's going to come and ask for their deposits back. So basically every loan that they did was backed by at best 10% and probably closer to 5% on the dollar of deposits. So of course, in the 30s, in the great Depression, what happened was there were runs on banks because after all, more than 5 or 10% of people want to get their money out because they're afraid. Then the whole thing goes boom. So what did we do? The United States created this massive regulatory apparatus to surveil the risks of banks, which of course has been captured by, you know, it's regulatory capture by the banks. Themselves who write the regulations and they created the FDIC deposit insurance. Well, now we have a new world that is emerging. And it's not just this is not bitcoin related, this is stablecoin related. And if Carlo were here, he'd be smiling. Where we now realize that today banks, some banks still do lend locally, but banks were the largest holders of U.S. treasuries. Well, if you, you start scratching your head, you say, well, why the hell are banks holding treasury securities and buying, you know, mortgage backed securities and doing all this other crap with their deposits? Why, why are they doing that? It's not the reason that we have it. And the answer is because they can make money at it. And the other parts are hard, but with Stablecoins, all of a sudden you have the ability to cut out the middleman. And so instead of putting banks and bank deposits, then levering it up, you can go to a fee for service model. And that's going to change things because then the regulation is much, much less necessary. The need for deposit insurance effectively goes away and you have a totally different world. That's where we're headed. It's going to take a long time to get there because the banks, as you say, have all the big buildings in all the country, in all the cities for a reason. Banks used to be a really small part of the S and P of the economy. They're now a very large part of the economy because we've had decades of easy money and decades of what I would call financialization. So that's what's getting unwound here. And so with bitcoin as a backdrop, bitcoin becoming collateral is really just an aspect of how the financial system can utilize. And as these entities are going to need to figure out ways to make money when they can no longer get free deposits. I mean, the best estimates are somewhere around 30 billion a year. Gary. 30 billion, that's kind of the number of the implicit subsidy given to the banks by all the regulations where they can pay out 0.5% or less for deposits and then go and buy Treasuries or whatever to create yield. And so which of course is levered. So it's a pretty big number that they get and that's why they can afford all those buildings. So I don't know if that answers your thought, but I think that you're on the right track. I just think there's a lot of changes here and it's not all Bitcoin related.

[C]

Thanks, Dave.

[D]

I think we covered it, man.

[B]

Yep, and meanwhile we're good. We're testing the moving. We're getting closer to your test of your near 50 ma again.

[D]

So again, I guess as is tradition.

[B]

I will tell you this, my prediction, and this isn't terribly surprising after two full days of markets, you know, going lower this time of year. You're going to see ETF outflows today and that's what you're seeing.

[D]

So we saw ETF outflows yesterday, Bitcoin and ETH, but 70 million of inflows to Solana, interestingly, just because it's the new kid in town, but interesting that we did see outflows on both bitcoin and ethics.

[B]

Well, look, markets are markets. I mean there are people. You might remember Jim Bianco saying that he thought that the ETFs would cause, would accelerate crashes because on days like today people would sell and days like say people will sell. I mean at some point you need a capitulation sell off and what, you know, the magnitude of that, I don't know. But it'll be more in terms of flows than you'll see it necessarily in terms of price. But all sorts of things can happen. But we'll see what happens over the next day.

[D]

I can just tell you that I am buying every price here and down with all the dry powder that I have, lower would be better because obviously I have a long term view but operations starting to buy has kicked in pretty hard for me.

[B]

Well, I think you, I, my suspicion is that it will, when you look back on it, you will think that your operation is a smart operation, but we'll see.

[D]

And my other prediction is that in like three or four days somebody will clip me saying that and tell me how stupid I am because price is like $2,000 lower or something when I'm telling you I'm buying it for a decade from now.

[B]

That's, that's a fact because people will clip it and if the price is, is, is 110 or 115, they're going to say you're stupid for waiting to buy. You waste all your going to buy in higher and if the price is at 80, they're going to say look, you started buying too soon. You're, you're an idiot. So either way they're going to call you an idiot. So look forward to that.

[D]

Yeah, I always look forward to being called an idiot. All right everybody, thank you so much for joining another crypto town hall. Always great. This was a uniquely good conversation in my opinion. I love everybody on the panel here today. Really great crew. So look forward to chatting with all you guys again in the very near future. I think we've really cultivated a great mind trust here on this show and really differentiated from, you know, the degeneracy of the rest of the market, which I think is very valuable. And. And, you know, I continue to come here and ask you guys questions and listen to sort of formulate my own opinion. So. So thank you for that. And, of course, especially you, Dave. It's great to chat every single day and get your opinions. It helps my market view a lot with your depth of knowledge. So that's all we got for you guys today. Thank you so much. And we will see you all tomorrow. Later.