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Retail Crypto Sentiment At Multi Year Lows! Danger? | Crypto Town Hall
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Retail Crypto Sentiment At Multi Year Lows! Danger? | Crypto Town Hall
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Matt Hogan
Morning Everybody. Happy Monday, February 10th. This is Crypto Town hall every weekday 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. I should say almost every weekday because we did take last Thursday and Friday off as none of the hosts happen to be available on those days. But the good news is literally nothing has happened certainly for bitcoin in that time. If you take a look at the bitcoin chart, pretty astounding since Thursday until this morning when it went up slightly, we basically had bitcoin opening and closing the days within $150 for four straight days. Insane lack of volatility and price movement over that short period. Interestingly, as we sort of have here in the title retail crypto sentiment and multi year lows danger. There's an interesting tweet from one of our favorite guests, Matt Hogan, who obviously is on the show all the time from Bitwise the other day. That said, there's an absolutely massive disconnect between retail and professional sentiment in crypto right now. Retail sentiment is the worst it's been in years while professional investors are extraordinarily bullish. It's like living in two completely separate worlds. To me that means that that's a recipe for a massive bull market personally, because if the big money is buying and retail sentiment is down, well, that's tale as old as time is that it takes nothing more than prices going up for retail to FOMO in and buy higher. Right. And that's sort of the process of how these things go. I think it's indisputable that right now we're at the most bullish we've ever been as far as retail sentiment towards bitcoin. I think we can dig into what it means for crypto outside of bitcoin on this show, certainly. But for bitcoin, you know, you have meta planet up 4,800% in Japan. Basically dying company that simply added bitcoin to the balance sheet is the best performing stock in Japan. You have microstrategy, excuse me, Strategy acquiring another 7,633 Bitcoin this week. They now hold an astounding 478,740 Bitcoin. We have 22 states proposing strategic bitcoin reserves. We have World Liberty Financial, the president's or the company, the president's name is attached to adding a strategic reserve. So I think that companies, governments, et cetera are adding bitcoin and retail is somehow in distress. And I think the answer to why retail is in distress is because we have this barbell where bitcoin has moved there's a ton of ATT and money in the washing machine of memes, and everything in between is somewhat languishing. Zillion. Go ahead. I can't hear him. Can you guys hear him? I cannot. Okay. We get these glitches where sometimes certain speakers can't hear each other. That's why I asked. Carlo, I'm going to let you jump in. I literally just retweeted you on your tweet about, quote, unquote, crime season. I mean, this is what's clearly damaging retail and sucking the interest out of most of the market is the absolute insanity in the meme coin cycle, right? Yeah. And it is insanity. First of all, thank you on behalf of my engagement for the reach for the retweet. I always appreciate that. You're welcome. Good tweet. Good tweets. So I got to agree with Matt. I actually got to visit with Matt down in South Beach. He was speaking at the Real Vision crypto gathering, and I have to agree with him. After done, after having done back to back conferences, I went from south beach to Gary Cardone's conference in St. Pete that he hosted, where a lot of industry people were present, people high up in coinbase, people with Cathie Wood's Ark. And I think the consensus is that the people that are in the sector understand what's happening and retail sentiment just needs to catch up. No denying that the debauchery and meme coin land is definitely a draw because we're still moving the same pool of liquidity around. We're just trading a hot potato between the latest op token and until we get more infusion of outside money and retail actually comes in, it's going to probably be that continued passing the hot potato around. As far as meme coin runners, they definitely have a short life cycle right now. I cannot deny that. Scott. Right. But we talk about this notion of crime season, and there's this point that you made right when Trump launched Trump Token, and that is seemingly being played out in real time when you watch Portnoy go through the full range of emotions and questions about the legality of his meme coins. There was a sentiment when Trump launched that everybody can just launch a meme now. The President did it. I can, too. You came on very clearly and said, that's not going to fly in court. Right. As a lawyer, you said, he did it so I can do it. Does not work. And maybe he has unique circumstances and you literally have Dave Portnoy, like, making videos, talking about the legality or Potential problems of what he's doing, right? Saying, hey, does this mean that if I say I'm going to dump and I dump, it's totally fine, I can dump on whoever I want? I mean, prime season. Yeah, it's troubling because there's a lot of that sort of behavior going on. And I think, as I had commented previously, I think a lot of people have been emboldened by the fact that, okay, we have Trump coming in, and he is definitely bullish on crypto assets. I mean, the Trump family launched their own mean coin, and it does embolden people to think, well, if Trump can, quote, do it, then so can I. But first of all, reminder, you're not Trump, so let's get a reality check here. Second of all, you still have to work within the regulatory boundaries, and you've got to understand that there are fraud statutes out there, and it's not a, it's not a difficult lift, especially when you've got people openly commenting about dumping on their followers. And I'm not saying that that's what Pertno did, but it's, it's. What you're seeing out there is you're seeing a lot of reckless, brazen behavior. And that's not good because it's all evidence. It's all on chain. And Trump may be pro crypto, but he's also, his track record is pretty much he's a law and order type of a person. I don't think his Justice Department is going to ignore this stuff. People may think that it's crime season, but I think the reality is going to be much harsher. What a horrible term to even catch any sort of adoption. Crime season. Right? Zillion. You had your hand up. Hopefully your mic's working. Yeah. Is it working now? Can you guys hear me? You're good? Perfect. Hey, guys, thank you for having me. Yeah. Just a quick comment, first of all, on the price action and the, the general environment of the market. I think we have reached a level of dislocation between what we see in the OTC volumes versus what we see in the exchange type of volumes. And, and, and, and obviously, price is, is made at the margins, right? So, so when you have. Today, we see that the OTC volumes are very healthy, especially where you see this type of behavior. This type of behavior, very specially noticed is on the Ethereum asset, where you have a very active otc, but at the same time, you have very little liquidity and very little price action at the retail level, at the market, open market, Level. And this comes from the fact that OTC right now is accumulating. And retail, unfortunately, retail is being marketed to entering into future contracts in derivatives a lot more than buying the actual underlying. And this is why you see predatory behaviors from market makers like we saw last Sunday and we saw it again this Sunday to a lesser extent, simply because there were a lot less positions to. To get liquidated. And, and this is one of the issues, one of the sticky issues with our market. And today we see it even more that we have more transparency and we have more tracking tools and we have more people basically just tracking the issue. If you look at for example, the ETH market in particular last Sunday dump, which was basically done at openings of Hong Kong, was basically a predatory dump on retail to have position liquidated. Was it connected to exchanges? Was it connected to. Obviously certain counterparties took advantage of that, but you can totally see the predatory behavior of dumping assets and just going after liquidation levels. I mean, listen, I don't remember the exact details. Zillion. Sorry to interrupt, but it's an important conversation. There was also, I don't know if it was Wintermute or another market maker, but was actually liquidity was pulled on centralized exchanges even in the spot market, which allowed sort of that leverage cascade to happen, correct? Yeah, that's right. And this is basically because the market and the way money is made in this market is by liquidating retail. And a lot of of retail is being marketed to a lot of people retail participating in this market. They don't understand that when they enter into a future or perpetual contract in an offshore platform, they're basically not buying the underlying asset for them. They're basically buying ETH going long on it, right? And for them, they're market participants basically, and they hold the asset where they don't. So what we have right now, we have basically Wall street buying the real asset or buying basically like an ETF of the real asset. And we have retail still participating in gambling behavior, which at a certain point will lead to obviously the market, the underlying assets shifting more and more into institutional institutions, having market makers having less the ability to kind of manipulate the price, etc. But for now, and you know, I think these were. We're basically at the last few trades where market makers can completely pull liquidity and can make a lot of money, because market makers have made a lot of money last Sunday and this Sunday. So this is this explained that basically the retail is completely, is not participating in this market yet is waging, like you said, for the price to increase and then when the price is high, very high, then everyone fos. Yeah. And then nothing's better marketing for bitcoin than a higher bitcoin prices or crypto. Exactly, exactly. And, and just a quick one on the meme coin, on the meme coin phenomena is that to, you know, meme coins have been bas. Everyone was scared of meme coins, everyone discredited meme coins. And today we see Binance making another positioning in its history, a position in itself as a host or main host of meme coins. Basically just riding whatever utility we have in this cycle. Because this cycle, let's be frank, we don't have a killer utility like last cycles, I mean last cycles we had NFTs, the cycle before we had the ICOs. So hopefully if we have a bill in the US that passes quick enough, we might have another ICU era in this cycle, you know, where, where you know, small companies can raise very quickly, can make the required disclosures, etc. And can raise on, on, on, on a particular status and, and can be able to, to participate in the market, capital markets in this way. So for now we don't have anything. So we have memes. So people obviously speculate on memes. Yeah. Bill, Bill, go ahead. Hey, good morning. It was great to see everybody in Florida last week back in freezing Northern California. So a few things on the comments. We sent out our update to our fund investors last week and we kind of dug into what we see in the macro and our take right now is that you, they won't call it qe, but something that looks like QE via the treasury, treasury general account and other means is coming. And the number one priority for Trump right now as it relates to finance is clearly getting long term rates down and he doesn't have a whole lot he can bring to bear to do that. And, and, and most likely is going to have to in the background push Powell and Treasury to buy long dated assets and there's only so much treasury can do. It's really the Fed that's supposed to buy those assets, not Treasury. Although they can in certain instances buy long duration bonds. But the issue right now is that until those rates come down, retail action is going to be mooted. And we've seen this before. And so it looks to us like if you look at the long term cycles, the four year cycles and the five year cycles around Bitcoin altcoin Treasury rates, they're actually lining up really well. I mean Bitcoin dominance peaked. It had an intraday peak at about 64% last week. It peaked in the last cycle at 71%. You know, it's either gonna, it's either gonna mirror rhyme or, or not look like the last cycle. And I'm leaning towards it's going to rhyme with the last cycle which says we may have already peaked at 64%, we may have a flush that gets us up to 70%. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day if either of those is true. If bitcoin dominance starts to fall and we have a hint that long term rates are going to fall at the same time, I believe we're going to see an epic alt season and I think it will look most likely start, you know, in the next few weeks or sooner. That's, that's my kind of read of the, of the tea leaves which we've been sharing with our clients. But you know, look, we could be off by a few weeks. Selective alt season, I assume, Bill. Right. Yeah. For me, when I talk about alts, you know me, I'm, I'm referring to the crypto assets that actually are adding value from a smart contract perspective. And while I don't track a lot of the L2s, I'll, I'll include them in there just because, you know, they probably add value to someone. I'm not Talking about memes, NFTs and all that stuff which, which, you know, look, long term it has its place. I'm fine with it. It's just, it's not what I'm talking about. So I'm talking about like the top 50 assets that are actually adding value, whether it be for defi or, or gaming or picks and shovels, etc, etc. So, so I, I think it's coming. I'd be shocked if this season turned out to be dramatically different. I think the biggest difference is the stimulus checks. But even the stimulus checks were just dwarfed by the amount of liquidity that came into the broader system via lower rates, quantitative easing, etc. So while retail is going to drive this cycle, I think it's going to come because the Fed has to reset 7 trillion plus in debt and they don't have a lot of they can bring to bear from the shelf to do it. And, and so yeah, sorry for the long diatribe. I think that's coming. Yeah, and I love that this sentiment is at multi year lows because it really rhymes. It really, really rhymes. And that's when I get excited and you know, I've already made my bets but If I had a big truck of cash right now, I'd be backing it up into, you know, the top, the top five or six, you know, L1s right now. It's okay, you're allowed to say Ethereum. Yeah, no, I'm bullish on Ethereum from a price perspective. You know, I have my issues with it. I have my big issues with Ethereum from an architectural perspective. But hey, look, even Abra, we're, we're all in on Ethereum when it comes to defi because we haven't been able to migrate to other platforms yet. And that's the reality. So. So I do think Ethereum and Sui solana, et cetera, et cetera, are all going to crush it in the next few months. Unless I'm just completely reading this wrong. Dave, then Joa. So a couple things. I mean, I said very similar things to Bill on macro Monday last hour. I think that it's worth understanding for all the people who keep calling for a bitcoin perspective for this massive dip to happen. People are saying, well, look at the last cycle, it stalled out at 60 something. And then look what happened after. When it stalled out. The funding rates on all the markets were six times where they are today. Sentiment was dramatically better from a retail point of view. It stalled out when retail exhausted itself and there was no bid underneath it. This is literally the exact opposite. Bitcoin is hovering right now within 5% of its all time highs and staying there and not moving down with literally no retail support whatsoever. So let that sink in and let sink in. What's going on? It doesn't look remotely like it did in the last cycle. In this we were between 55 and 60, whatever it was. In point of fact, it looks exactly the opposite. What Bill said, probably the most important words that he just said. There are two points he made that I've been saying. One, liquidity is coming or funny printer is coming, memes, et cetera. But the other is we love it when sentiment is this bad. Well, the reason for that is because people have pulled their money out. What we've seen is the great washing machine people saying, okay, bitcoin seems to have stalled out, so let me buy into whatever Altcoin or whatever meme coin only to have them get crushed. I mean, I was just looking on CoinMarketCap over the last 30 days. I mean, it's really hard to find other than a couple of outliers like Ondo. Almost every major alt has gotten crushed. I guess XRP had its rally toward the tail End of the rally in the same period. But most of the memes or otherwise have been killed when bitcoin is more or less within 5% of the all time high. Hey, Dave, we talk about that exact cycle all the time. And I've been thinking about this a lot more. What you just said is my base case. But I think that in the past people actually sold bitcoin to participate when, when it got boring to participate in all these other things. The more I look at like the accounts on X for example, that are talking about memes or all the other liquidity, I would venture to say that most of these people, we have now a much bigger participant pool and most of these people have never probably owned bitcoin and are not actually. I think we just have bitcoin and everything else and I don't know that the money is actually flowing down from bitcoin this time. I think people now hold their bitcoin or they maybe. Yeah, yeah, clearly stopped. And that's why, I mean every other major. I mean how many people have made the point, you know, bitcoin is the lead sled dog, right? Because it is, it has been historically. Only this time, you know, bitcoin stalled. Some people took their money out, bet on it and on various other stuff and no one came in behind them. And that is, which is, which is quite literally how you form bear market bottoms. You know, when people. I just don't think, Dave, that the degenerates this time touch bitcoin. It used to be like in the previous cycles you had to own bitcoin first and those people traded with leverage and they made money and then it went down to altcoins. Now I feel like 90% of people who own bitcoin just kind of passively own it and hold it and just don't participate in the rest of the market. And most of these other people came in through memes or NFTs in the past cycle and have zero interest or knowledge about bitcoin. I just really feel like it's almost two different markets this time. Yes, I agree. Even more bullish if that were true. And I kind of hope it is. Yeah, Bill. Yeah, I was just going to echo that point. We, we see that a lot. Right. So it's almost like bitcoin is boomer coin now. And you know, we talk to people, some of our younger clients, they just have minimal interest in, in bitcoin and are really super interested in what's driving defi. What's driving gaming. Right. We saw it when when, when Trump coin was, was rallying pre inauguration. You know what was rallying in its wake, right? Solana. I mean it had biggest run since 21 I'm guessing. And Bill, importantly bitcoin didn't do anything and every other altcoin went down 25 or 30% to get into Trump. Which proves my point, right. There was no sell off in anything else. And a lot of my friends were asking me, you know, how do I buy Solana to get this thing? And, and, and so I hadn't heard that since Doge in and maybe a little bit of XRP like five years ago. So, so that's very telling to me. Right. So, so I do think that there is going to be some new narratives along with the liquidity this cycle that transcend Bitcoin. I would also say though, I, I think that part of your point is correct. Around, around the bitcoin not moving into alts on, in terms of the number of people doing it. In terms of the number of dollars, it's probably more because the value of bitcoin has gone up so much. You know, we haven't dug into this, but I would venture a guess that that's right. Meaning, Meaning that's interesting. There are few fewer people who are going to be buying alts with their bitcoin, but on a dollar basis there's probably more dollars doing it across a fewer number of people because so much is locked up in, in ETFs and other, you know, securitized instruments now or collateralized debt obligations, whatever. So, so it's, it's a very different dynamic in terms of a lot of these kind of intra crypto movements. But the bottom line, I'm sorry to be a broken record on this, it's still the same in my opinion. It's all coming down to market liquidity which is going to be a function of interest rates, maybe oil prices a little bit. I think, I think, you know, gold is a leading indicator here and I think liquidity is coming and that's what I really care about. So. Yeah, yeah. Hey Scott, Look, I, I don't know if the sentiment is, is bad to be honest. If you look at the ETFs, right, you see on, I think it's January 29th, we had 104. There's been almost a billion dollars put into the market through the etf. But what I've been tracking, I've been tracking the wallets of all the market makers and everything else. They have been systematically dumping on the market, flushing out liquidity flushing out leverages. They'll, they'll send some soul, send some ethereum, push that down. Then they'll follow up with about $20 million of Bitcoin and then push it down. And they've been doing that every hour on the hour until two days ago. Right. And they've been doing it for two weeks. Right. And I think the reason why they're doing it is because this is how they make money. And now that banks are approved to custody bitcoin, everything else, and the strategic reserve, that would be a secure national security risk if market makers can just manipulate the price. And I think there'll be way too much money in the market for them to be able to do that any longer. Right. So I think they're taking their last hurrah where they're dumping like crazy, just going hunting for liquidity. And you can literally go to like coin glass or what's Arkham and track the wallets and then look at the liquidity levels and you can predict it. You be like, okay, look, half, half a billion dollars and liquidity will, will get, will be liquidated if they go to this price and what happens, it goes exactly to that price. And then assume as, as soon as there's more shorts than longs, it falls down to like 100 million in longs and like half a million in shorts, they'll start pushing it up. You know what I mean? They just, they're playing a game. This price should be way higher. Market makers are having their last hurrah before the price moves. Because if you, how are you measuring a sentiment? And the only way I'm measuring is I'm looking at the ETFs. I see how it's coming in and it's up, it's up a lot. Yeah. I think that's why, you know, we have retail crypto sentiment and multi year lows, not retail bitcoin sentiment. But yeah, go ahead, Brian. But you're measuring, you're measuring bitcoin versus altcoins. The bitcoin sentiment is fantastic. Is fantastic. It's the altcoins that are wrecked. It's not the bitcoins. Bitcoin is, the sentiment's amazing. It's, it's 45% up since the elections. Altcoins. 80% of altcoins have retraced all their, their entire post election move. That's the problem. But ran, the people who invest in alts right now I think are washing their money in, in memes and most people are losing money. That's what I think the people, the people that invest in alts now are wrecked. There's no one, there's no one left. It's, it's a graveyard. There's no one left because everyone got whacked out. That's not true. That is, that's a completely untrue. Ron, come on. I mean there's people who are sitting on huge gains in, in, in Solana Sui. Yeah, I, I agree with you that the funny money in memes is gone. But you know, I mean I, I know people who are sitting on massive gains right now. And yeah, the more conservative, the more conservative investor was, was, was. So what happened was people thought alt season was coming. They moved, they moved way up the risk curve and they moved down and they started to, they moved below Solana and I mean other than then I had on my show today, but other than like 20 tokens or something, all the alts have retraced their post election moves or something. I say all the major alts. I'm not, I'm not going to. We've seen this before. I think you weren't here when we talked about it at the beginning. But, but we've seen this before. I mean, bitcoin dominance is always, you know, spiking in these cycles when liquidity is at its lowest and sentiment follows because people don't understand. Not this high though, Bill. Sorry. Very high. The dominance is very way higher. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's not true. That's exactly. It peaked at 71% and last week it, it had an intraday top at 64 and came down. We were talking about this, I think before you joined, Ron. Would it get back to 71 and mirror the last cycle or just rhyme and maybe it peaked already. I don't really care was my comment, because, you know, I know what's coming in terms of, you know, what Besson and Trump and Powell have to do here and that's going to lead, you know, a lot of risk. But when, but when, I don't really care as long as it happens in the next three or four months. I think it's going to happen in the next few weeks. But as long as it happens in the next quarter, I don't really care because. Hold on, but hold on, hold on. They're talking about we're still tightening, let alone easing. We're still tightening. Usually we tighten and then there's like a break and then we do easing. In this case, we're still tightening. Like, like I just wanted to put, to put Some perspective here, like we're still tightening and they've, they've stopped the buying. So I'm not really sure what you mean by still tightening. I don't really agree with that comment. I would say the direction, it's really the velocity of money and the direction that matters here, right? When you get into bond markets, it's convexity that matters, not absolute rates. And right now they've basically come back to a semi neutral stance and I think the loosening is coming. The biggest problem they have right now is the disconnect between the bond markets and the Fed's rates. Right. This is the big disconnect. And let me tell you, right, given how Trump defines success, he is going to do whatever he has to do to get those long term rates down and bring whatever pressure he needs to bear. Right? He will. You know, one of his tools is going to be these tariffs versus convincing people who don't want to buy our debt to buy our debt. I'm not saying he's going to be successful, but my guess is, is when I say not successful, I mean getting other countries to buy the debt. But something is going to be brought to bear here to get those rates down. He will do whatever the Effie has to do to get those rates down. Mark my words. Yeah, for me, guys, if I may, for me the sentiment and the capital inflow because we tend to reason too macro in this micro environment given the overall kind of asset class weight. For me, the world is yet to realize that the United States has chosen to settle its value on public chains. And once the world realize that the United States have, has made that choice, institutions will follow and capital, inventory, all type of capital will want to have ownership in those public chains. And I think that's the next source of liquidity for the L1s at least. Ran, what do you think? Yeah, I mean I'm, I'm bullish, I'm long term bullish. I'm just not as short term bullish as everyone else. I mean the fact, you know, the US hasn't yet decided to put all its spend, they're talking about it, Elon's meeting with people about it hasn't happened yet. I think there's a long way to go between talking about it and actually getting it done. To be honest, I'm bullish, don't get me wrong. But I just, I'm a little bit more cautious, I'm a little bit more cautious than the others because I think that everyone keeps saying this is what happened the last Cycle is what happened the last cycle, guys. This, they've only been two cycles. The sample size is two. The sample size is two. That. Even in those two cycles they were similar, but different. The one in a double top, the one at a single top. Like, you know, like I'm just a little bit more cautious given the market, the market structure. Yeah. So can I. Let me respond to that because I think that's the smartest part of what you said. I don't want to be demeaning, but that actually was very stupid. Right. So my take is that you got to combine all the pieces of information, you see, to understand directionally where this, where this either is going or has to go. Right. So how much debt do we need to refinance this year? I don't know, 8 trillion. Right. And if we do it at current rates, it's a disaster. Right. And everybody knows that. Right. Well, everybody that pays attention knows that. And we also know that right now, other than quantitative easing, the only thing they can do is drain the treasury general account, which, you know, kind of looks like quantitative easing. Then the good news for them is they don't have to call it that, but it is basically quantitative easing as they drain that account. Right. And that gives them, you know, maybe six weeks of cushion depending on how they do it. It's about a trillion dollars, it's about 800, it's 800 and change. And so it gives them about six weeks of cushion depending upon how they do it. The big unknown right now is this nonsense that, you know, the liptards want to shut down the government in order to block Elon. That's going to last about three weeks and then they're going to realize that that's, that they have no support with that because Trump's numbers are rising. So I don't really think that's a huge risk. And after that they have no more shit to bear. Right. That they can bring to bear, other than, you know, in my opinion, quantitative easing or negotiations on tariffs to get other countries to buy our debt, which I don't think is going to happen. Right. So I could be wrong on that. But, you know, I really don't think China and Japan want to buy US debt right now. If anything, they want to be a net seller. Right. So, so that means that quantitative easing has to be brought to bear if you want to get those long term rates down. I just don't see any other way. Right. I've, I've, I've talked to so many people who know this Stuff. And no one has been able to give me an answer on any other approach to get the rates down. I mean, you and I know we disagree on this topic. I think there are alternatives to that. I get that there's a lot of debt that needs to be refinanced, but I'm not sure I fully agree with you. It's going to have to be qe. I think financial conditions are pretty loose. And we spoke about Craig Shapiro. He's saying the same thing. They have to roll off the MBSs of the balance sheet. There's a whole bunch of other things they need to do first before even looking at qe. And they're still doing QT right now? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't call it QT anymore. I mean, they've basically slowed it down to the point where 30 million. What is it? 30? Is it 30 million a day? What's the number? 30. 30 billion a month? I think. No, it's 30 million a day. I think something like that. Which is about 600 million a month or something. Yeah, it slowed down dramatically. So. So to me it's kind of neutral. But, but you know, Vinnie, I think I agree with you in terms of, there are different ways that they will go about this. But, you know, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we can call it whatever we want, but it's still a duck. Right? I mean, I think that's the. But it's only going to happen in a crisis. It's. This is the one thing we talked about this this weekend. I just, I don't, I get you, I get you, but I don't, I don't, I don't see it that way. I think, I think, I think to them a crisis is having to, you know, look, they broke the 30 year channel of treasury rates. We saw what that did. And at this point, right, just given the debt spiral that we're in, we just cannot afford interest payments to triple. It's just not, it's untenable. Right, so, so it would cause like a massive. Yeah, but, but the argument is that, the argument you're making is that, you know, we, we need to QE because we don't have, we have a liquidity. Well, QE is done when there's a liquidity crisis. Right. And based upon the, the financial conditions right now, it does not look like we have a liquidity crisis. Not yet, anyway. Yeah, I guess it depends. I mean, to me, I think you're looking at it from like the perspective of like, okay, it needs to be a lot more broken. And in my opinion, right. I think Trump defines broken as consumer sentiment. And I think if mortgage rates stay this high and the housing market tanks the way it is, consumer sentiment will become a crisis for Trump. Now, Powell may not agree, but Trump has other things he can bring to bear besides quantitative easing. Right. So the treasury can also step in if they deem things to be a crisis. And some things they can do with Congress, some things they can do without Congress. I know we talked about that as well. But look, it's coming regardless of the form it takes, in my opinion. Gary, can you hear me? Great. So kind of an amalgamation of the last 15 minutes of conversation. It's kind of threaded through the recent cycle of being memes because we're all bored. You know, what is the new innovation of this cycle? In the past it may have been smart contract and it may be Defi season and things like ICOs back in 17. I think it's interesting that a lot of accounting rules for corporate treasuries have changed with regard to cryptocurrencies, specifically with Tesla and how things have been accounted for as far as their Bitcoin holdings, similar with other corporations like microstrategies and so forth, really making Bitcoin the popular asset in treasury for those entities. Then you have the history obviously of the President and the embracing of other types of assets, such as World Fi, buying a lot of Ethereum, buying a lot of wrapped BTC and also AAVE as being very popular with Vice President Vance and so forth. So I think it's interesting about what will be the rise of the next narrative and will it happen during this year of this particular cycle? There's been some movements in the past week, specifically with Vitalik being called out and the Ethereum foundation in some ways being called out about not embracing Defi even though they enabled Defi. So I think in the past couple of days there's been $130 million worth of Ethereum put into specific address that is I think going to be used on avi. So instead of selling, buying basically when is low on Ethereum and then selling basically at market tops like the Ethereum foundation has done historically. It seems like they're going to embrace the product or the culture that they really enabled in a lot of ways. So it's interesting to be able to potentially pair. And again this goes to is there a kumbaya moment between Bitcoin and Alts? Is there something that's an opportunity with pairing on Defi so with the bookkeeping of an entity like Tesla, if they hold bitcoin and they have accounting that helps their stock, similar to microstrategies as far as advertising and marketing, it could be potential again going to be loved or hated by many to pair wrapped bitcoin with an official Tesla meme coin, meaning that they would hold something like 90%, never sell it on the market, simply put it in an LP and then it becomes effectively free marketing for Tesla the product, Tesla the stock, Bitcoin the asset that's on the other side of the pair. It just basically becomes an opportunity for meme culture to basically promote the things that they have a small percentage of that in some ways wouldn't be sold. This is the narrative that Micro Sailor has made popular. It's very interesting that for many years, if not until recently, Satoshi could dump the market, Mount Gox could dump the market. These entities that hold hundreds of thousands of bitcoin could dump the market. But in some ways Saylor is embraced, the microstrategy is embraced as never going to dump the market. With memes. It is similar if it is especially paired with something that is popular as OG and considered stabilized Bitcoin. So I'd like to hear that that's kind of the thread the past 15 minutes has been from different speakers. I'll just say one thing and I think that you need to appreciate that the accounting rules changes cuts both ways. So on an upmarket, sure, profits are great, but if this thing tanks 20, 30, 40, 50%, the impairment losses are going to look really bad. A lot of these companies books and we haven't gone through that part of the cycle yet. So I think just be careful what you wish for. So if it was again, if it's a treasury again bookkeeping, right, you're only realize a loss if you, if you sell, you only realize a gain if you buy. Everything is in context of marketing and you know, the, the volunteerism of basically creating memes all over Twitter of a cartoon character or you know, an anime character or something like that doesn't really have any yield to any kind of entity. It is simply the first launch or the dev behind it or whatever that can rug. So like I think it is potential to have. And again this may not ever come to fruition because it goes to bookkeeping, it goes to accountability. Who is going to be. Is coinbase going to be the responsible agent, things like that. So there's a lot of moving parts but I think again we haven't seen a narrative rise Other than buy this particular meme, you know, within the first three hours and then sell within the next three hours on Solana, that's really what has happened over the past six months. Dave yeah, there's a bunch to react to there. I was going to comment on the, on the macro stuff. I think Bill has articulated it pretty well. We had a whole discussion about a half hour's worth of it where we talk about where liquidity conditions are going to be. Most important point that I would back Bill up with is this administration's avowed goal is to manage the long end of the curve. Scott Dissent has been very clear about that. And so, you know, rate cuts probably are off the table, but I don't think anyone really cares. But other actions in order to manage the long end is absolutely what they need to do. And frankly, betting against what a government needs to do when they have the policy tools at their disposal, probably not a good idea. So it's sort of like the newer version of don't fight the Fed. I would say don't fight the Treasury. So that's kind of the point. To back up Bill, the last conversation about memes comparing it to bitcoin, honestly I don't think I've heard something I disagree with more in a very long time on one of these shows. It's hard for me to even think about it that way. I think the dollar is a meme too. If you really want to get right down to it. Michael Saylor has covenants and restrictive ways and policies in his company that if he turned around and changed it the way that Portnoy did over the weekend, he goes to prison. And it isn't even a question that he goes to prison and the company goes down. You can't make those comparisons and don't compare Mount Gox or any of these or SBF with what's going on in the world of bitcoin. It's very, very different. It's very public, very transparent. Significantly, there's no 51% attack risk really. And the stuff that's being talked about is crazy. What we are seeing is a very strong, and this is where Matt Hogan and I agree completely, a very strong change which is more new long term holders buying bitcoin because they see it as a slam dunk to get pari passu with gold. And by the way, most of the people buying bitcoin now are also gold holders or own it also or are buying both because they see what's going on monetarily. Bill I'd Love to hear Bill still there. I would love to hear how many of your customers also are gold bugs or hold some gold as well, because I think the two are moving in concert. And as gold moves higher, it just adds fuel to the bitcoin fire. It's very, very different. And you know, what's going on with Meme Coins is no different than anything else. It's gambling. People like to gamble. Give them a market to gamble in. And I spent most of this past weekend at the Hard Rock Casino. Now, I was playing in a poker tournament for, you know, two full days, you know, 1,000 people in a tournament and was lucky enough to make a final table. But when you walk around the casino, you see a lot of people willing to throw money at things that they know they're more likely to lose than win. And the Meme Coin Casino is no different. But that's not the same thing as investors, the professionals who are getting into bitcoin who are now able to get into bitcoin because of the accounting change which eliminated. Don't say it works both ways. Yes, it used to be it would only ratchet lower. Now it could be on both sides. So now you can actually get paid for your risk. That is a very big deal. So anyway, I'm ranting. Let me respond since you responded directly to me. Yep. So I agree with almost everything that you just said as well. And I don't really have a hard negative about what you said. I do agree with a lot of it. What I would say is again, I'm not saying that all of a Treasury, that a particular corporation, a particular manufacturer of a product such as Tesla as an example, would be some kind of meme parody with bitcoin as far as assets inside their Treasury. I'm not saying that at all. I'm simply saying that it is interesting that three to seven million dollars gets spent on a Super bowl ad versus buying a particular crypto. And again with the idea of it's going to be bought up to a certain price and then dumped onto the collector. Or again, David Sacks making comments about these are collectibles and things like that. It's interesting to say it's a never sell. There's, you know, again, what, 7,6 million worth of Bitcoin that is, that is has a narrative that it's never going to be sold. Hold on a second. I want to be really clear because there is a middle ground here. Micro strategy or now strategy is a bitcoin holding company, full stop. So they, they for them to sell would be effectively to have to. Well, I mean it would be very, very difficult. They, there'd be a class action lawsuit. It would be, it would be ugly in many respects and it's one that would win as opposed to these bullshit ones that come out. A company that is cash flow positive that says the dollar is going down. The best investment for a part of my money is in bitcoin because we think it's 90% undervalued is yeah, sure, they could sell it. They could sell it because they go cash flow negative and they have to raise funds. Sure, it can happen. But the totality of treasuries of cash flow positive companies being effectively close to zero holding in an asset that is many believe to be 90% plus undervalued is a trend that is highly likely to continue. And those same people, whether it's in treasuries, what you're seeing is Bill's customers and Matt's customers are all ones who individually are buying into Bitcoin, Blackrock or Bitwise or Abra or whatever. And then in their professional lives say well my company's sitting on a pile of cash, maybe it's a prudent move, yes, that could reverse. But that's a trend that's likely to be more the snowball rolling down the hill than up the hill for a while. That's really my point. We do agree with that last point is bitcoin is something that is acting as collateral just like in a lot of different banks using gold as collateral even though it never moves from vault. So I agree, agree that there's value on the history of bitcoin, the custody of bitcoin, fireblocks and so forth, whomever is responsible, the insurability of loss of bitcoin. So I like all of those things, of course, for the whole industry I'm simply saying again, as collateral, sure it'll be lent against instead of, or borrowed against instead of sold most likely. Just in my opinion. But yeah, I agree with almost everything you said. Yeah, we do have a sponsor here today. So if anyone has any final thoughts on that topic, I do want to give people the opportunity to round that off. Bill, I know that you were speaking, didn't mean to cut you off. No, all good. I was just going to say our fastest growing business is clearly people borrowing against bitcoin right now and they are basically putting that bitcoin up as collateral in a signed contract. And so I think that is going to grow. I think it's also going to grow against other L1s as well. While they may not be perceived as money, it's not going to be any different than borrowing against your Apple shares or your, you know, your Google or Facebook shares and except, you know, you'll be able to do it much quicker in near real time. And you know, I've probably spoken at five events in the last month and that is clearly a top three topic on people's minds. The other thing I would say, and I think Benny left, which is unfortunate because he and I have been getting into this a lot the last few days. We love debating this topic and it's probably boring for some people, but I do think that with these tariffs right along with potential significant budget cuts, I do think we're going to see significant middle class tax cuts in the next cycle and it's going to be very difficult for the Dems to stop that. And that actually acts as kind of a liquidity injection as well, independent of what the Fed does that may offset. Actually I think it's a bit of a misnomer that tariffs are long term inflationary. If you look at the numbers, they just don't actually play that out historically. I think that's a big misunderstanding on the effect of tariffs and I have data that I've seen to back it up and I can share in the thing here. I've been looking at this and what is the real effect of tariffs and I have never seen an instance in the US was built on a tariff based model where tariffs were really significant long term inflationary. But that issue aside, I do think they're going to be offset with very significant tax cuts would be my guess. And if you see that, I do think that that's going to also lead to a big spike in kind of risk on investments for retail as well. Quick comment on this buzz. So Hassett just came out this morning while the show was going on and shared the actual strategy and I think he was very clear about it. If people know Kevin Hassett, he's very, very bright. I might disagree with some of the things that he believes, but I think he's incredibly bright. I was going to say on cnbc, he came out and he said he's the NEC chair I believe, and White House economic advisor. He shared that the real play is they want to fight inflation by increasing the labor supply while lowering aggregate demand, which by the way is not always the direction that you go, especially given the fact that they're actually reducing supply of labor more than affecting aggregate demand by the mass deportation. Whether you agree with it or not, that is the likely final outcome of that. Right. It's just the truth that when you remove all these people that are low income labor supply, that's actually going to be the opposite effect. Again, I don't support that as people know and so I support that we should get rid of illegal aliens. But my point is just that ultimately that's the implied. It's going to actually reduce labor supply more than it affects aggregate demand. The tariffs incentivize local production. So Bill, I agree with you most of the time, but in this I will disagree. In the short term you will see incentivization of local production which then reduces supply of labor. But the increased cost actually does lead to increase in aggregate demand. Sorry, reduction in aggregate demand but also increase in total costs. It's just, it is how it is. Price increases do happen in the short term. Maybe you were talking about long term. So maybe that's the difference here. And then the most important one. Yeah, the most important thing that they're doing, which I think all of us can agree on, is that what he's really talking about, and this is sort of the linchpin behind the whole thing, is that we're going to see mass unemployment because all these people are going to be laid off from the government sector. So that will be the massive supply shock or supply increase in labor that, you know, I don't know where these people are going to get jobs. I don't know how that's going to work. But we're going to see a significant increase and unemployment as a lot of these departments shut down. They do employ millions of people. So maybe is one answer. But look, in the short term, everything they're doing is going to cause a ton of slowdown. It's going to cause a ton of problems in the short term again in the longer, long term. So much so that the president himself came out and said, hey, there's going to be a little bit of pain. And I think that is what justifies qe. I think that is what justified the reduction in QT and the now increase in QE and maybe allows them to inject liquidity in the markets. But is in my opinion what's happening in the short. That makes a lot of sense. And keep in mind that these government jobs, we spend about $4 to add $1 of GDP via these government sponsored jobs. Maybe 350. Right. And so that is, you know, it actually is a magnifier on, on the amount of tightening that that results in, which I think is going to lead to significant qe, which is, which has more of a trickle down effect to retail than government jobs ever would. Right. So I think I agree with everything. But in the middle, Bill, there will be a lot of pain for a certain segment of the population for people who aren't able to find a job within the 78 month period that they're probably paid. That's true, but I don't know, I just, I, I actually think a lot of these people are well educated and if they're forced to get back to work, and I mean that in exactly the way it sounds, you know, then I don't think it's going to be as bad as everybody implies. I mean. Yeah, or you're implying. Excuse me, Bill and Dinesh, we do have a sponsor today. I would love for you guys to come back. I know we're doing these shows every day at 10am Eastern, so more than welcome to come back because I, I hate getting in the middle of a good conversation. But we have State One with us here today. And just a disclaimer before we, we get started is that Mario's company IBC does marketing, incubation and investing and sponsors on this show are sponsors working directly with ibc, not necessarily crypto Town Hall Scott or myself specifically. So State One, I believe you have Elliot here today. If you guys want to start off by just giving an elevator pitch of exactly what State One is. Yes, hi. Great to be here. Fantastic conversation up to now and I follow with it and definitely looking forward to, to hearing more of that, of that in the future. But yeah, as far as US State One, let's talk about our project. The, the short version is that State One is where gaming and commerce merge. A little bit longer version is to explain what it is. State one is a new or innovative ecosystem that is designed both for businesses and for users to interact with each other by using technology such as XR extended reality and ready to use immersive solutions. In these immersive solutions, how are you guys using XR and gamification to make that a unique proposition? Okay, very good. The way that it works is you have the two biggest players, you have the businesses on one side and the users on the other side. Businesses can use EXA technology, which is extended reality, which you can have augmented reality and virtual reality or mixed reality, a mix of the two. And they are able to showcase their services and products on the ecosystem with the users. For example, we had companies showcasing a new car and having potential clients or existing clients actually sitting Inside the new car, choosing the interiors, or by using augmented reality with their mobile phone, clients were able to see a new luxury watch and the way it would look on their wrist, or a new jewel and so forth. So that's how extended reality comes into play here. And there's a token as well. So the gold brick token, how does that fit into the fold here? Yep. Okay, great question. The goldbrick token is what powers the whole ecosystem. Now. Just one point that I want to make is that we did not launch the token first, then to create the product. We worked for this product for two years already, so the product is already here. Now we're launching a token to actually power what we have already built. And the token is launching on February 24th and we have completely sold out in seed sale, pretty much almost completely sold out on private. We have a very small allocation left. And just before the token generation event, the launch, we will have a public sale on four, actually five more to be announced. Very reputable launchpads, spores, pools, Serious pad and Gamify. And then of course, once it launches, the token will be able to be used on the platform to power every single transaction that happens. And there's the gold brick game as well, that people can play to actually earn tokens as well. How does that work? Yeah, absolutely. So the gold brick game is why users are on the platform and that's why we. I know that the word has been used, you know, ad nauseam, but this is an ecosystem and they work together. You have the business and companies on one side that wants to push, want to have a strategic advantage in Web3 and wants to push their services and products. The other side you have the users that are there because they're playing the game. The game is a strategy game where you can buy real estate assets, you can renovate them, you can make them obviously nicer, bigger, and you can also place smelters on, on these plots of land. The smelters obviously will create and produce more gold brick tokens depending on how active you are in the game. Your citizenship level goes up and by going up, you have more benefits. For example, one of the benefits is once you gain these goldbrick tokens, you have to wait less time to be able to transfer them, transfer them back to your wallet and then swap them or, or do whatever you want with them. But it's a game of strategy, it's a, a real asset value game because you can actually purchase these assets even with real money, with fiat money, credit card, etc, and it's a very different thing to what we have seen in the past with other players. What's the user traction been like thus far? Because we worked on this for a while now. We have already more than 7,000 users that have actively played the game. Of course, we're always after more users. And at the moment we have a promotion where anyone can come for free can go on the state one one is the number IO website, go up to the left the hamburger menu and click on sign up. And just by signing up, you are given a free smelter which will produce tokens for free. All the explanation and all the guidance is given in our social media accounts. But yeah, 7,000 and growing. You mentioned a few things just in your answer of kind of how the gameplay works. But what are some other ways that this game differs from say, other play to earn games or other games that are out there in the web3 sphere that users may be familiar with who are tuning in? Okay, so yeah, another great question. Again, this is a real value asset game. You are buying a property. It's not a property that you can touch with your hands. It's a virtual property. And because this is a virtual world, however, in these assets, in these properties, for example, companies, businesses can purchase a showroom and then in that showroom, by using extended reality, they can sell their products and their services. The user is playing the game might go into the showroom and the business is giving a promotion where they say, hey, I need you to do a few tasks. In exchange, I will give you some goldbrick tokens. So that adds the gamified experience as well. They're all unique features that we really have not seen before. And of course we also have some that have been used before, such as treasure hunts and Easter eggs and other little things like that just to give a little bit more fun. But particularly right now, the promotion that we've got with the free smelter is something that we're pushing hard so that we get more people playing the game. So in a few short weeks, it sounds like you guys are closing up your public sale, private sale, also going on some launchpads and doing your TGE event. Is there anything that you want to highlight in terms of the token economics or opportunity for listeners that might be tuning in? Yes, and thank you for the opportunity. We've been talking tonight about meme tokens as well. This is not a project like that. This is a real project. It's a real business. We have more than 100 businesses already onboarded and some big names. We have universities we have the Italian health system that is using the platform Prisons, one of the biggest, if not the biggest Rolex distributor in Europe using it. We have a previous Italian national footballer that's supporting the project. So this is like a real business and it's run like a business. Can you run through a case study perhaps of one of those entities that you mentioned, like perhaps the prison? How are they taking advantage and using the platform? Like what's the value prop to them and why are they so excited about using it? Okay, in that case the prison is using the platform for clinics or telehealth because in some instances there is logistics issues with transporting the prisoner for different reasons. They use extended reality to have consultation with doctors using the platform, basically doing this remotely. Wonderful. What was the date exactly of the launch pad? So if listeners are tuning in, they can keep an eye out, put it in their calendar and do their own research. So they're all staggered, but pretty much they all happen between 10 days and 7 days. Start between 10 days and 7 days before the launch, which is on February 24th. Just come to our telegram group and just follow our Twitter account and all the days will be given before that. We just have a very, very small allocation private sale. We think it's going to sell out tomorrow. But there is a little bit of private sale at a very discounted price that you can buy and to do that just go on the website again, you will see a link where you can see where you can read buy strategic or private sale. Once that is gone, that's it because we have everything fully allocated to then going to public and then of course launch and of course, as far as you know, being a reputable business and project. The tokenomics include the fact that not all the tokens can be sold at launch. There's only a portion that can be can be sold. There's a cliff, period vesting, etc. And for people who are tuning in, the state one account is here as well. I had it up in a speaker spot earlier. But if you do click the State one account and go in the bio, there's a shortened link. So if you click the link in their bio there, you'll be able to go to the website telegram and get all of that information there. But Elliot, I want to thank you for joining. If there's one thing that you'd want to prompt users to go do, check out the game, check out the platform or check out the private sale, what would it be? What would that call to action be? For people who are Tuning in. Two very, very quick calls of action. Just go and buy the last tokens in private sale at a very, very discounted price and go on the website state 1 Wandenumba IO click on Sign up and get some free tokens. Wonderful. So two opportunities there. So one is to actually participate in the private sale and two for anybody tuning in they can actually sign up and get some free tokens right now, which I think a lot of people will be excited for. That's right, yeah. Excellent. Well, well, Elliot, I appreciate you joining us today. For people who are tuning in, make sure you that you're following Elliot as well. He has the link in his bio as well to the State One website so everyone can go there and learn more. But Elliot, really appreciate you joining and have an amazing Monday for everyone who's tuning in. No worries. Thank you so much for having us. No problem at all. Hope to have you back on the show and I'm going to stay tuned and good luck with the rest of the private sale. I'm sure that you guys will do very well and good luck selling that out today. No worries. Thank you so much. Awesome. Well take care everybody. Have a wonderful Monday. We are going to be live again at 5pm Eastern time actually with the devs from the Hawk to a project. So this will be the second time that they're actually speaking out after the interview that happened last week with Faze Banks and, and Thread Guy and Frank. So we're we're going to be reporting on the other side of the story later today. So that'll be at 5pm Eastern and the devs will be coming and I think they have some pretty interesting things to say after hearing that that interview last week. So invite anybody tuning in to also catch that later. And with that have a wonderful Monday.