← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Standard time. I can't tell if Dave is on stage. We are in the glitch. Did you guys hear crazy echoing music there or was that just me wondering which? Just me.
- [00:13]
B
Sounded crystal clear to me.
- [00:14]
A
Oh my God. Sounded like.
- [00:17]
C
Can you hear me, Scott? And am I too loud again?
- [00:19]
A
Now I hear you, but you seem too soft.
- [00:22]
C
Too soft? Yeah. How about now?
- [00:26]
A
Kind of the same, but I'm gonna just.
- [00:28]
D
Okay, no, no.
- [00:29]
A
Sit here and listen to you try to fix it because it's gonna be entertaining for everybody.
- [00:32]
C
Yeah, don't worry, I know where it is. Yesterday was too loud and people pitched at me.
- [00:37]
A
You're fine. Yeah, I heard the music as if there was a really terrible DJ trying to put three songs together who had never DJed before. So I'm glad that everybody else didn't hear that. What do we got today? SEC approves listing standards for crypto ETFs. We'll get that to that in a minute. I think we have to at least have a brief convers. The flaccid Fed and their lukewarm attempts to have any effect on the economy when they're completely useless. Nobody cares. That's my hot take. And the fact that exactly as discussed and predicted here on Crypto Town hall, absolutely nothing happened.
- [01:17]
C
Well, I mean some. There are things happening.
- [01:20]
A
I just mean price. We were like five minutes after it was down, up and right back to where it started.
- [01:25]
C
Yeah, in the crypto world it was, it was a complete non event. And today obviously, you know, we bounced off those levels and are a bit higher. Stocks are a bit higher. So risk assets are doing well. Long bond is a bit lower. It's still 4.1. You know, it's about 15 basis points after a 25 basis point cut. People are going to point to that and yell and pull out the hair shirt and talk about bond vigilantes.
- [01:52]
D
It's.
- [01:52]
C
Etc. You know the, the dollar index is, you know, down. Well, it's up a little bit today, but it did it retraced off of the famous 96 level. So you know, you know people are going to talk about that but the truth is is there's no surprise, Scott. Right. You know, why do, why should markets move when more or less he did what, what the consensus expected him to do? That's really the bottom line. Right?
- [02:16]
A
Yeah. But you know, there was at least a little bit to unpack in his words. I mean he definitely hinted at rising inflation.
- [02:24]
D
Right.
- [02:24]
A
And cutting, when you're hinting at rising inflation seems to imply with a dual mandate that he's very concerned about the job market, you would think. He also made that weird comment about it being a risk management cut, like with a giggle because he's so lame it's like impossible to even watch him. It's whatever, but it was just a very weird meeting. I mean it was exactly what we said. He would be non committal to anything. He would be sort of slightly hawkish and you'd want to punch him in the face by the end of the meeting, which I did. So he did his job just like. It just infuriates me that we have to like we have to talk about it, but it just infuriates me that this gets so much attention which way he scratch himself.
- [03:08]
C
Let's unpack for about 30 seconds and then we can get on with it. We'll go into it in more depth obviously on Monday. But the risk comment is because there are some stresses in the system in terms of SOFA rates being a tick above fed funds or at least at times there are some stresses in the system with delinquencies. There's some stresses in the system, you know, in, in some of the other funding markets. And so, you know, when he's talking about risk, he means risk of a global financial crisis. He just, God forbid you say that that would trigger mass panic. So obviously he isn't going to say that. You know, as far as in dual mandate goes, look, it's very clear unemployment trumps inflation and will do every time unless inflation gets to a level where people are screaming about it far more. Which really boils much more down to, you know, CPI is, you know, over 4, 5, 6 and starting to do what it did in the 70s. And it's as much as, you know, he doesn't like 3% or 2.7%. It's not that. And so unemployment starting to tick up, particularly among majority as opposed to the, you know, the wealthy is a big deal and that's what he cares about.
- [04:16]
A
So did he abandon the 2% target? Do you agree with the take that he abandoned the 2% target? If he's cutting, admitting inflation is rising and thinking we're not at 2% yet, have we basically just gotten a passive admittal that now we're at a floating rate, 2% is not the target and maybe 3 is fine. I mean they all made up 2% anyways, by the way, for anybody who paid attention to that's not a real.
- [04:39]
C
Thing in New Zealand anyway. Now, I mean, look, he said that he hopes to get back to it in 2028, which will be over two years after he's out of, out of the position. So, I mean, I don't know if you said to your wife, honey, I'll get to it in 2028. Does she think that you actually still have it on your mind, whatever it is?
- [05:00]
A
No, because she'll be talking to her second husband.
- [05:04]
C
There you go. We got a lot of laughter at least this morning. I mean, I'm sure C.J. i'm sure you care, you agree with that.
- [05:11]
A
C.J. loves talking about the Fed. It's his favorite topic.
- [05:15]
E
Oh gosh, here we go, Here we go. No, but, but I, you know, Dave, I agree with everything you said. It's frustrating. The data is not accurate. It's all about politics and narrative. But I think the biggest thing to take away from this is what Scott just brought up with, which is for the first time, maybe ever, we are at a point where it is a very realistic outcome where broad based inflation expectations can actually de anchor from this 2% rate. And the, the, the effect of that would be a new discount rate being used across the board which would affect all types of business planning. And I don't know if I probably would lead to ultimately some form of admitted yield curve control and, and bringing us towards the way of Japan. And I think when, when PAL is gone in May of next year, all of this is going to accelerate. So I think, you know, Dave pointed out astutely that nothing is going to surprise the market. The market is forward looking. We have the CME futures, we have the, the poly markets to, to understand, okay, we are probably going to get another 50 basis points of cuts, maybe even 75 basis points of cuts. Probably not. And going into the end of the year, but pal's gonna be replaced and, and Trump put Powell in last time by listening to somebody. I don't think he's gonna make that mistake this time. I think Trump's gonna be like, look, I'm not taking recommendations for this position. It's my turn to make my pick because I gotta set up for the last couple years of my term and I gotta set up for the next guy. And they are gonna put in somebody who is. Low interest rates. Low interest rates. And I, I, I, I think I heard percent call for like a 3. 3, 3. I think fed funds is going much lower than 3. I wouldn't be surprised if we went out back to A, A 0 to 0.25 and then the effect of that.
- [07:11]
C
Negative. I mean, look, I think they have to, I mean it seems baked in the cake that this Fed, even this Fed, this constituent group of governors, has a half in mind that will take the Fed funds rate down to whatever the PCE is. You know, they want those two to converge at zero or as close to zero as possible, which implies at this point another 130, probably 100 basis points. Now if the PCE, however, rises 100 basis points and it'll meet them. So I think that's where they're at now. Will Trump put in someone who says, damn it, it doesn't matter, we need growth, growth, growth, growth and more growth. And so I don't give a crap, you know, how much spills over into consumer inflation. I guess that's possible. You know, it's hard to say. I mean, that's what you're saying. And we got Andre, you know, and Ali Binks with hands up. So let's listen to people other than me.
- [08:12]
F
Yes, thank you, Dave. So I think the big elephant in the room is, or they actually do a big elephants in the room. So the, the first big elephant in the room is actually they're cutting rates into this re accelerating inflation. Right. I mean, we, we've seen re accelerating inflation rates across the board. Right. Headline inflation, core inflation components, you name it, have been re accelerating. And my, my expectation, my personal expectation is that inflation, headline inflation will ultimately grind towards 5% again. Because if you look at money supply growth like M2, it tends to lead headline inflation by sometimes even three years. So it's a very good leading indicator. And based on, on the re acceleration and money supply growth we've seen, you can expect that headline inflation will probably go towards 5% in 2026 with Fed rate cuts. Right. You, you're talking about a new kind of regime of financial repression. We probably have like negative or very low real yields. Right. And I think that's really bullish for Bitcoin.
- [09:23]
C
Well, that certainly is, but I have to push back a teeny bit. The money supply inflation link in terms of CPI in terms of asset inflation. Yeah, no, no doubt. It's, it's almost perfect as a comparison. You know, if you look at the S P house prices. Yeah, you nailed it. When you go to consumer prices, the effects of technology, increased productivity, outsourcing, other things have moderated it so to the point where we've had incredible money supply growth over the last 25 years and mostly low consumer inflation because we've had tremendous advances in technology, we had the complete reinvention of the supply chain via the Internet, and now we have AI coming into account. We've had a complete improvement in oil extraction and natural gas extraction technology to the point where we're producing 18 billion barrels of day more when, you know, over a time period when analysts projected it was going to drop by that amount because the field's being exhausted. So you have to be careful. It's both. And the Trump bet, as it were, if he goes the complete dovish route, is that he can trigger more investment, more innovation, to actually suppress consumer inflation. We always complain. And that's why you see this dichotomy, by the way. Right, Andre?
- [10:37]
F
I totally agree.
- [10:39]
C
Expenses, which hasn't really gone down for a lot of reasons, education expenses, service expenses, they don't go down because technology hasn't made them better.
- [10:47]
F
And so I mean the equation, right, the quantity equation is like MV equals py, right? And so like money supply times velocity equals real income times inflation.
- [11:01]
C
Right. Well, I totally agree.
- [11:03]
F
I mean you have to have some kind of.
- [11:05]
C
I wish Professor Freeman were alive today. I would love to debate it with them because I think it needs to be adjusted for the impact and the divergence of where capital flows go. I doubt he would disagree. I actually had this conversation with one of his disciples and he sort of said, yeah, we kind of know that that's true, but it's very hard to measure because productivity, there's no good metrics for it because it's so disjointed. It affects different industries in different ways. But it is an interesting point. Anyway, we're getting into the weeds too much apologize. But your point about will be more liquidity, there will be lower real yields. That seems baked in the cake. I agree with you.
- [11:41]
F
I think that's, that is, yes, I.
- [11:43]
E
Gotta, I gotta push back against that just a little bit there, Dave. And I don't want to dive too much into the weeds, but I, I agree with you that there is without a doubt a separation between the inflation of assets versus goods and services. But when you look at food, energy and medical prices have gone up. I, I had a restaurant the other day and I ordered wings. The wings were like a dollar fifty each. My, I ate with my father. He told me, man, not that long ago I can come here on Wednesdays and I can get 10 cent wings. Now they're a buck 50 all the. So I think a lot of people out there are actually hurting a lot of people who haven't had the ability to establish.
- [12:20]
C
I don't disagree, C.J. that, that's look medical for damn sure. For lots of reasons and Danish, if you were on, we could talk about that. You know, he's an expert on the field, you know, services for sure. For all the reasons food is impacted by many, many things. And you're right. You're absolutely right. There, there have been, we've had multiple issues with our food supply. There have been diseases that have called herds. On the beef side, we did the same thing. On the poultry side, we did the same thing on the egg side. It's absolutely true. There's no doubt. And you know, some of it is definitely due to just inflation from the money supply. There's no doubt as well. So I don't disagree with you. I just said my concern. Overarching trends.
- [12:58]
E
Oh no. And I agree with that. But my concern here, and I don't, I don't mean to take it political, but if, if this is mismanaged over the next couple of years and headline CPI does get away from us, this could affect the 2028 outcome. I think we need to be really care.
- [13:18]
C
Yep, I see Scott's gone, so I'll, I'll continue. I don't see him up here. Ali. Vince, you've had your hand up and been patient.
- [13:29]
G
Yeah, yeah, I was just gonna chime in here, just kind of looking at some of the language Jerome Powell was using throughout his, you know, speech and stuff and he really reiterated that, you know, it was a risk management cut, it wasn't a panic cut where some folks wanted to uh, see like a 50 basis point rate cut. So I think in general there's really nothing urgent or big to be worried about. The other thing is I actually think Jerome Powell wants to keep his job and maybe get another term in there because, you know, he kind of downplayed the tariffs a little bit and saying that, you know, the tariffs are a one time price adjustment on goods, it's going to be short lived and you know, expecting inflation to come down with it. And it doesn't seem like he's in a rush to achieve that 2% target rate as you were mentioning. Right. Forecasting to reach it by 2028. So he's kind of downplaying that. And then the other thing is, is that it was also interesting to hear Powell say that tariffs are being paid by U.S. importers.
- [14:38]
C
Right.
- [14:40]
G
I think if he wanted to stick it to Trump, he could have easily said that, you know, the tariffs are being paid by the American people and you know, and also cutting rates when inflation is rising. So I don't know, maybe, maybe he'll play to what Trump wants and you might get that renewal. But how do we, you know, relate this to the average person? Well, with the current administration a dovish sec, which I think will be get into conversation soon as well about yesterday's release and seems like kind of a dovish fed, you know, the main play here is really ownership and I think ownership in Made in America, you know, assets is what's going to carry a lot of people through this transition of technological innovation with robots, AI companies, you know, making layoffs, firing, but they're still able to have a bigger bottom line because they're making efficiencies within the system. So like if anybody has, you know, any family or friends, it's, it's a good conversation to start talking about ownership and assets because it seems like this is what, you know, the administration wants people to prioritize. In the long run.
- [15:56]
C
There'S, do you.
- [15:58]
E
Really think PAL is going to get renominated?
- [16:01]
C
No. Zero chance.
- [16:02]
E
Zero chance.
- [16:03]
C
Zero.
- [16:03]
D
I agree.
- [16:04]
C
Yeah, zero chance that But Powell is, he's playing for his legacy.
- [16:09]
G
But it seems like he wants to, it seems like he wants to play to it because I think he could have easily said some more concerning language and you know, but he is playing.
- [16:20]
C
For his legacy though. So I mean if you think about it, I'm older than a lot of you guys, so I kind of to understand, you know, you, you he wants to be remembered as the adult in the room. That's what he, how he wants to be remembered. Right? He wants to be remembered as the calm, steady, you know, person who navigated the inflation gauntlet to, you know, create never, never, never question the fact that they were originally looking to create what they call a soft land. His administration would gag on notion of the soft landing. They want re acceleration growth. So he's trying to moderate all this and it makes it very complicated. Interesting, right? So that, that's really bad. But anyway, I think we've beaten this one to death. We talked about it all day yesterday. I think that the title is probably more interesting. I'm curious what people think. I, I, I'll give one stat to start the why this matters. So if, if the SEC with 19 being I'd love to have more lawyers and I don't see Carlo up here. He could talk about others could. But by fast tracking the ability to start creating index ETFs and, and others that are based on commodities is potentially a very big deal. I'll just give one step to give an idea for investors why it's such a big Deal. I was fooling around this morning researching it. So in 1990, if you bought the S P500 as it was constituted in 1990 and held it to today, your return was really good, right? But if you had bought the S and P index fund and allowed it to continually adjust as it does when S and P deletes laggards and adds newer companies, you were up 75% more. Just think about that number for a second. Buying an index which is managed based upon in their particular case, there is a lot of choice, but any mech, any mechanistic rebalancing sort of index will outperform the static basket and not by a small amount. And over 30 years, 75 outperformance is a very, very big number. It works out to the difference between, for every hundred bucks between a $2,000, you know, 20x return in 20, 35 years and a 37% return or 37 times return, you end up with $3,700 investors. All the RAs out there, all the people who manage capital are well aware of this. So the ability to have index funds in crypto will be perceived as a very, very big deal. And you know, hopefully we have others who can describe why, why that matters. I mean, Scott, are you actually back?
- [18:56]
A
I was living in the glitch. It was lovely. Yeah, I, I tried to get back on like 17 times, couldn't do it. But I'm here if you can hear me.
- [19:05]
C
Right. So anyway, just to put that. But I don't know if you heard the context, but the context is index funds that would allow an investor. And this is really important in something like crypto, which is an emergent technology. I mean bitcoin, you don't need it. I mean, this will help Bitcoin by association. Bitcoin will be in every one of these indices. And so people who are afraid because there's always these things about quantum or there's still people who are tech investors who think bitcoin's technology isn't good enough. Of course they haven't heard of ZK rollups or lightning or any of the other things that are launching on top of bitcoin. But fact is there are people who are more likely to put money there when it comes to the rest of crypto. There are a lot of people, I'd say dominant number of people who say, I don't know who's going to be the winner. I just know the entire sector is going to be worth more. That may be the single thing I heard more than anything. Else, I'm curious what everybody else thinks. You know Bruce, you've been in, in this industry for a long time and you talk to a lot of normal people. Do you hear that? Whoops. Bruce left.
- [20:11]
E
I, I agree with you though, Dave, because a lot of the people that I talk to, they, their biggest problem is I don't have the time, energy or understanding to pick the winners. So for a lot of people who manage their assets and enjoy investing, we like to go out there and do a deep dive and pick our winners. But a lot of people don't have the time and energy for that. So getting an index allows for passive investing. It allows for someone to say, you know what, just like you said, Dave, I, I don't know what who's going to win, but I know this industry is going to grow and I want some exposure to it. And now they have an outlet and that creates a, a new funds flow into the entire industry.
- [20:50]
C
Cool. Carlo. Andre, I know you had your hand up, but I specifically was trying to get Carlo's opinion before. I don't know if you can, if you want, Carlo goes first. Good morning, Carlo.
- [21:00]
G
Good morning, Dave. Good morning, Scott.
- [21:02]
A
Good morning.
- [21:02]
G
Yeah man, this is huge. And just look at what it's doing across the board. I think we are entering into the everything all at once phase here with alts because if you look at the charts right now and I don't think this is in response to the rate cut, you're seeing sui up almost 10%, Avax up almost 12%, Link is up almost 7% across the board. ALTS are absolutely ripping. And I think it is in response to this because this opens up institutional access to crypto index funds. You can get, and that was very well articulated earlier in the conversation, you can get a broad based fund that touches on several crypto asset majors. You can now offer this to retail which gives institution the institutions a lot of opportunity here. You know, our friends at Bitwise have talked about this and how exciting this is and they've been rallying for this and I think Hunter's probably taking a victory lap here. I think this is an amazing accomplishment for the sector and it's going to further legitimize these assets and it's going to bring in retail. There's no question about it. This is something that is totally approachable and gives people a really risk off way of getting into these assets without having to be crypto native. I don't think you can ask for a better setup.
- [22:29]
A
One of your friends from Bitwise has His hand up.
- [22:33]
F
Andrej that's right, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's watershed moment because it definitely means more crypto ETFs are coming. And just two observations that, that have been made by my colleague Matt Hogan in his latest CIO memo. So he wrote about this, these generic listing standards and what they did in the traditional world when they were introduced in 2020, they dramatically increased the pace of ETF issuances, right. From an average of around 170 ETFs per year to 370 ETFs per year. So they actually triple the the pace of ETF issuances. Why is that the case? Because they dramatically decrease the time takes for the SEC to prove these filings. Right. It usually takes up to 240 days. Right. With actually no guarantee of approval, but now it will take up to 75 days max.
- [23:38]
C
Right.
- [23:39]
F
And I think in terms of standards, I think now the key, the key criterion will just be to have a regulated futures, right. On a qualifying futures exchange like cme, cboe and also lesser known platforms like Coinbase Derivatives and Bit nomial.
- [24:00]
C
Right.
- [24:01]
F
So we have so many altcoins lined up that actually tick these boxes already, which means you will be able to create index ETFs.
- [24:17]
C
Yeah, yeah, perfect.
- [24:19]
A
And I was in the glitch. So Dave, did you guys talk about obviously the basically generic approval process before you talked about the indexing? Andre, did you guys talk about that?
- [24:34]
D
No.
- [24:34]
F
No, we haven't, no.
- [24:35]
A
Oh my God. That's the bigger news. This is the smaller news, the bigger news in the ETF space, obviously I would say that the SEC has approved a basically a generic litmus test for whether you can get your ETF approved. And effectively it's larger than crypto. Just to be clear, it's not just about crypto and it's more qualifications as exchanges. But when it comes to crypto, if you've had futures on Coinbase for six months and you apply for an etf, you're going to get fast tracked for an approval and that's about 12 to 15 tokens. So now there's going to be a massive race obviously to get your token traded on Coinbase futures. And we're about to have ETF blues. I mean this includes inevitable hits, greatest hits like Shib, that will clearly be getting an ETF at some point and others. But yeah, if you're on Coinbase, you got futures. Welcome to the party.
- [25:33]
C
But here's, here's the funny thing. I mean, you know, will it be individual mean ETFs or will you get Meme Index and recapitalizing? I mean, I see Carlo raising his.
- [25:46]
G
Hand frantically, so definitely, yeah, look, yeah, yesterday, I called it yesterday and I got some flack on the morning finance show about it. But Dave went to my side on this because you're absolutely going to see Meme index funds. Is it responsible? Is it the right way to go? It's way off the risk curve. But people are going to play with this man. And I can totally see a top 10 meme index fund coming out for memes, no question.
- [26:12]
A
Wait, really quick before we move on. James, you jumped on. You obviously were able to make it. For those who don't know James, he is the God king of ETFs and crypto and we worship at the feet of his Twitter account for updates on ETFs. And since we've got you here now and invited you specifically to talk about this, how many meme coin ETFs will I be trading six months from now? That's what I need to know.
- [26:38]
H
Six months from now. Probably just shib and. Well, actually, so part of the problem is with this, this thing, these issuers had found a workaround where they, they, they weren't like pure spot ETFs like this Rex Osprey, Solani ETF and a few other things. They had found a workaround. So they, there's issuers, they were filing for bonk and a whole host of like way other like out there stuff. But six months, maybe a little bit longer for things other than shib and Doge. But I mean you go back further, you go further than that, 12 months out, you could definitely see a Meme Index type product out there. I mean we're going to see a whole bunch of index products come to market. We're going to see 100 plus products related to crypto come to market in the next six months. I'll bet, I'd bet a lot of money on that.
- [27:23]
A
Yeah, I mean you kind of mentioned these. Rex Osprey, is that a dinosaur and a bird? I don't know, but I don't know who they are. But they launched this Doge coin quote unquote ETF today. Correct? Doj. So that finally, that was supposed to be a week or two ago. Those aren't maybe just in layman's terms, you can tell us how those are slightly different and how those got approved ahead of this sort of generic listing process.
- [27:52]
H
Yeah, so we'll get, I'll try not to get too in the weeds. But essentially a few years ago, say 2018, 2019 time range, they went through this process of generic listing standards for ETFs in general. So ETFs under the 1940 act that are structured as open end funds, which is the vast majority of ETFs had this process where if you filed 75 days later, you got the list. That's how the Bitcoin futures and Ethereum futures ETFs launched. That's how a bunch of these other products launched. The way to think about those Rex Osprey ones is they were able to basically use regulatory and legal workarounds, loopholes if you will, in many ways very smart moves to get these products to market. And the way they do it is they're holding spot, they're using Cayman subsidiaries, they're holding cash, but they're also holding other ETFs that are doing that same thing. So one of the ways this Doge ETF is doing or the Solana ETFs is they're holding European ETFs as a huge chunk of their portfolio that qualifies securities and allows them to fit in the 1940 act wrapper. I'm not a lawyer, but so that some of that might not have been exactly correct, but that's roughly how it was working. So I think that also was part of the reason that like spurred the SEC to get this stuff done. Because it was like somebody had figured out a way to do this anyway and it was just anything that didn't fit that 1940 act wrapper that had to go through this long 19 before process. And the SEC also doesn't want to go through writing these 10, 20, 30 page documents approving each fund for a new asset. Right. Like they don't want to do that. So they'd much rather just go through and figure out a way, way to get these things approved. And essentially what it comes down to is they outsource the requirements to launch an ETF to the CFTC and two issuers. Basically, if you meet these requirements, the SEC is wiping their hands of it.
- [29:36]
A
So what about ones that we've seen already kicked down the road, like a Solana etf? For example, we know that Solana has futures on Coinbase. Should that get approved imminently? Like, is it the next deadline? Do they just approve that tomorrow? Because now it qualifies. How does that work?
- [29:52]
H
Yeah, so you still. So when you get it, even when you had to go through the 19 before process, we're going back to the Bitcoin ETF heyday, right. There was two processes you need to get approved from one division, trading in markets for the 19 before and another division, corporate finance, for the prospectus or S1, the document that says what the fund's gonna do, the risks, what it invests in, what have you. This process just basically takes out that 19 before process, streamlines that very effectively. But you still have to go through that other division of the, of the SEC to get these things approved. So if they are not ready to let you launch, like they can stop you from launching if they really wanted to. So the SEC is already going back and forth with these issuers on Those prospectuses, or S1s if you will, to get these things approved. So they've already working on that for Solana, for xrp. I think Litecoin will probably be first to market potentially. But those things are coming in the next month for sure. I'd be shocked if we don't see something approved officially within the next month. So how quickly do they launch? How fast does this all happen? I don't exactly know, but it's going to happen quickly.
- [31:02]
B
Yeah, a quick kind of cynical comment or sarcastic comment and then a serious question like, do you remember when Altcoins did something allegedly different than Bitcoin? It just seems every, you know, Bitcoin does a Treasury company, these guys do the treasury company, Bitcoin did the etf, these guys. Everything else is doing the etf. So it's just the amount of innovation and I'm making air quotes as I say the word innovation is just everyone following suit. And it is what it is. The sincere question I had and I don't have an answer to it other than I guess so, but it's like, does anyone see a circumstance under which this doesn't happen quite successfully that we don't end up with ETFs of meme coins or you know, low value proposition altcoins. And part of it comes back to me is like, you know, valuing these instruments is really hard. And for people who've taken a securities course or done finance in university, we have all these valuation models and you know, they all come down to some expected discounted present value of expected future cash flows. And of course, very few of these things have any sense of cash flows unless they mint their own cash flows through yield, which doesn't really increase the value of the asset, it just increases the supply of the asset. So I think valuation remains a really, really hard problem and it just comes down to supply and demand of A speculative nature. And we end up having a whole lot of capital speculating on the speculation of something that you can't actually get to a fundamental value of in the vast majority of these cases. So, and I hear the predictions here basically saying, look, the fact that it's going to be offered on the market means that it will meet some demand for it, and so we can expect a lot of trading in it. It'll be highly speculative and highly volatile. But is there any circumstances under which the market shows up and says, no, thanks, or.
- [33:01]
A
You sound like a boomer who doesn't live in the trenches and doesn't understand the value of live streaming yourself?
- [33:08]
B
You've described my life to a T. Yeah, that's my life.
- [33:12]
A
You just don't get it, man.
- [33:14]
C
In, in the one point that I'll make, and I think I'd love to hear what Bruce has to say because he was talking about this, is the very fact that it's difficult to understand means that index products will be more likely to be successful, but that specific individual products might find their niches hard to deal with. I think that that's the way I would look at it. Bruce, you are 100 percenting a lot. So what do you think? Because, you know, you run a broker dealer, you talk to investors all the time.
- [33:43]
I
Yeah, I mean, of course there's a scenario where these things don't work. You know, first of all, I think, great. More freedom is wonderful. Everybody should be able to trade everything. All of these stupid regulations written, you know, before World War II by people who, you know, whose grandparents went to school on a horse should be completely discarded. Their authoritarian.
- [34:03]
B
Thank you for making me feel a little younger, Bruce.
- [34:06]
I
Well, you know, that mean, you know, the 40 Act. I mean, these things are. We're getting up to the point where it's almost a century ago, you know, the 33 Act? The people who wrote the 33 act went to school on horseback. Screw these idiots. That's crazy. It's ridiculous that, that this has any bearing at all on 20, 25, all of this.
- [34:26]
B
I wish I had a horse to go to school.
- [34:28]
I
We should grab it all. It's all illegitimate. None of these tyrants have any business getting up in people's business telling people.
- [34:36]
D
Oh, not so fast.
- [34:37]
J
You can't trade this asset or that asset.
- [34:39]
I
It's not their job. They can't protect anybody. They can't protect themselves. They. You wouldn't even trust them to feed your dog. They couldn't protect us from, from their buddy, Sam Bankman. Fried, who they rolled out the red carpet from, they couldn't protect themselves from, from Bernie Madoff, who was the head of the largest regulator by number of people. They're clowns and it's all illegitimate and nothing can do anything. So great, wonderful. They give us a tiny, tiny bit of incremental freedom and allow people to trade assets without going to jail. Way great, wonderful. However, yeah, the assets are junk. These are all stupid. 99% of these things are stupid. They're all going to go down to zero. They don't have any value, of course, they don't have any cash flow. It's just a bunch of big nonsense. A bunch of people who create some digital thing and they put a bunch in their pocket in the form of a pre mine and then they take a bunch more and they market it to suckers and it has no value. And the world, the fiat world, the broken stupid world of nonsense has put value on these kind of things because it distorts everything. It distorts academia, it distorts the military, it just distorts the media. It distorts everything because you have, you have clowns printing free money from thin air and giving into their cronies. So everything becomes out of whack. And you have this, you know, huge economy based on debt and phoniness and, and, and fluff. So of course you're going to end up with people having meme coins because everything else is a joke too. It's just incrementally a little bit less of a joke than, than the regular public markets, but it is a joke. They don't have earnings. They don't, they're not real companies. And that, by the way, is also the fault of the regulators because if they would have just allowed you to have good old fashioned securities and stocks, we would have never had an ICO boom and we wouldn't have some of these stupid assets. We would have had people actually making companies and selling shares in companies, which is a great idea. And some would make, some would make it, and some would fail. But they didn't do that. They made it too difficult to do anything that's a security, including a company, a stock, equity or debt or anything else. That's a proven instrument. So people made these stupid Rube Goldberg machines to try and avoid the securities law and, and strip out all terms that made it useful. You know, you don't, it's not based on the efforts of management. It doesn't pay a dividend, it doesn't provide equity. It's, you're based with nothing. You're based with a gift certificate to a store that nobody wants to shop at. You're based, you know, a World of Warcraft collectible that has a 3 billion dollar market cap. It's all stupid and it's all going to go down to zero. And the only thing that's, that's one of the few things that's useful in this is the decentralization aspect which a couple projects are trying to make an effort on. You know, most notably Bitcoin. And the whole purpose of Bitcoin was supposed to flush all this stupidity down the toilet. And instead of talking about cypherpunk values and changing the world and crushing the old system, we're, we're sitting there licking the boots of the system, trying to get back into this idiotic fiat thing where you, you know, 9:00am to 4:00pm on weekdays and, and it's a huge regression back and it's pathetic and everybody should be ashamed. But great, wonderful. The tyrants are not going to shoot you as much and they're not going to sue you for millions of dollars if you trade your asset. So go ahead and trade your stupid coins and your stupid gift certificates and World of Warcraft collectibles on your digital, you know, things. But yeah, yeah, whatever. I mean, yeah, there'll be a bunch of ETFs and maybe a couple will make it, but most of this stuff is junk and that's great. Junk should be allowed to be traded. It's called freedom. And I'm all for any, any freedom that we have.
- [38:14]
B
That was a great response, Bruce. When you go on some of these tirades, that's, that's really incredible. And so even if I see myself as a boomer, as an Amish, I'm quite comfortable with that in the face of the drunken orgy that you just described. So cool. Thank you. I'll miss, I'll miss out on the party.
- [38:31]
A
Yeah, we've, we've had some glitching with speakers going up, down all around. So sorry to everybody if you somehow got kicked off or returned to the stage. It's been a bit of challenge today and I know now that we're right up at 11 buzz, you were going to take over.
- [38:47]
J
Yeah. Before we get started, I think we got Narek up here in a speaker spot, but showing as a listener for me.
- [38:52]
A
Can we get a speaker?
- [38:56]
D
I think I can speak.
- [38:58]
J
Okay, perfect, perfect. We got you. Yeah, just a lot of, lot of glitches this morning. So I appreciate everyone bearing with us there. But just a disclaimer before we get started with today's ama. Mario's company IBC does marketing, incubation and investing and sponsors on the show are sponsors working directly with his company ibc, not necessarily crypto Town Hall Scott, Dave or myself in particular. So Narek, as we ramp up this AMA here, why don't you just start with an elevator pitch of what you guys do.
- [39:28]
C
Sure.
- [39:30]
D
First of all, glad to be here. Thanks for having me. It was pretty interesting discussion about ETFs. I love it. So regarding Coin Stats, managing crypto today have been nightmare. You, you have assets scattered across multiple exchanges, multiple wallets, different DeFi protocols, etc. It's nearly impossible to see the full picture. What Coins does is brings and unifies all your assets, all your blockchains, all your wallets, all your exchange accounts into one place by giving real time tracking, AI driven insights and full visibility over your portfolio with deep dive into analytics your buy prices, profit, loss, etc. Etc. So basically it's getting impossible to to manage your crypto assets without a solution like Coinstats today.
- [40:27]
J
Appreciate that I I just did. For anyone who's tuning in, we got the Coin Stats account up here in a speaker spot as well alongside Narek. So they're the the square, they got X premium with a gold check mark there and I've also pinned up into the nest a post from Coinstats as well. So if you're looking to check it out, follow along, make sure that you're following an official link through either of those those accounts there. Narek, can you just describe for our listeners who are tuning in, we have about 4,000 people here right now just what makes Coinstats different from other portfolio trackers that they might be using today.
- [41:06]
D
Sure. The main aspect that makes Coinstars different is probably ability to automatically pull data from pretty much any blockchain and wallet and exchange you know of. We support over 130 blockchains as of today, including full support for Solana, all the base major EVMs, Viva support, Bitcoin, XRP wallets, Dogecoin wallets, etc. The second aspect is deep dive into analytics. When you connect your wallet or exchange account, you don't only pull your balances but your whole transaction history with all the precise buy prices and trades and transfers between your wallet and exchange accounts and are able to pull out pretty deep report on what's going on on your assets.
- [42:00]
J
You know, just as an aside, one of my biggest pet peeves of using Etherscan for Accounting is that it's hard to actually download the Excel file to get historical price data on what price you bought at. Especially when it comes to Altcoins because sometimes they, they won't actually pull the prices in for, for Altcoins. So that, that's a, a feature that even myself I would definitely use on Coin stats because Etherscan is just. They're not doing it for me when it comes to accounting.
- [42:33]
D
Yeah yeah, it's just kind of don't do that with Interscan. It you. You should visit a separate website for each chain etc. On Coin Stats you can connect all your wallets and it will pull the transaction history with all the precise prices and you can export the data with CSV file and it will have the prices as well. And you can do the further accounting.
- [42:55]
C
If you need to appreciate that.
- [42:59]
J
What new features or innovations are you most excited about right now that you guys are working on to improve the app?
- [43:05]
D
Yeah, sure. We are working on a lot of AI features recently on bringing AI driven insights by using all the modern AI LLM technologies everybody knows of. It's OpenAI and Grog APIs. Imagine modern AI which knows all the latest crypto news, all the exposts etc which we've been almost going on the market. Sentiment which knows your portfolio, what coins you have, what's your prices, etc, what how much you bought when you bought each coin etc and also knows your your personalized financial risk reward ratio meaning how much you want to risk etc and it gives you personalized insights on how to properly manage your portfolio. Summarizing latest news which are personalized based on the assets you you hold. Meaning if someone posts something about some some coin you you own, you you get information about that. The second thing we are excited about is ability to we call it the time machine. So it's a feature allowing you to go back in time with your portfolio so you can check. Imagine you have hundreds of wallets and another 20 exchange accounts. That's a hard core user case for us. And you can go back in time and see what your portfolio looked like a month ago in terms of what coin you had, what were the prices, etc. And we can do that with a precision of one hour. That feature is being used for by a lot of active traders when they they want to go back in time and compare the results, compare what's going on, etc. And even if you have multiple wallets you might lose hold of some some coins and you can go back in time and see what happened with them. AI feature is only available for for white listed customers for now and we are hoping to roll that out for wider audience next month. But for example, the Time Machine feature is available today for our Degen plan users.
- [45:29]
J
That's pretty cool. I mean this is a problem that anybody who's in crypto full time certainly faces on a daily basis figuring out all of their wallets, chains, portfolio balances and things like that. But one of the hardest things that I've found for new people coming into the space is getting accurate information to make decisions on and specifically investment decisions. So what are the features that you'd want to highlight for perhaps those types of users who are looking to use a platform or tool like this to help them make smarter investment decisions?
- [46:06]
D
Sure. Recently we have partnered out with a company called Hexaes and they came up with a pretty interesting and powerful tool called Token Risks API. They call it Glider. What it does, it analyzes the contract address for potential vulnerabilities and it does by benchmarks it does significantly better than anyone in the market. I'm sure a lot of the people have seen the security vulnerabilities come on places like text screener, etc. Which sometimes might give some false positive results. Our partners came up with pretty powerful tool which is giving pretty good results in terms of token securities. And you'll have a full picture on what's going on with the token. Who can mint new coins if the owner can can freeze some addresses and 20 other different criteria which is done by analyzing a code of a contract address. And they have a pretty, they have a pretty interesting benchmark saying that they beat by 80% all of their competitors. It's available on coins that's today and you can go to talking page Reese and check the risk of a token. And it's important to not get rag pulled. It's released just a couple days ago.
- [47:44]
J
I think important to highlight here too is that I'm sure that a lot of people tuning in are familiar with what you reference like on Dex Screener or dextools, how they're just very what I would call primitive plugins to say whether or not a token is safe. And there's a lot of nuance for the simple metrics that they're coming up with. So that sounds like a really great feature that would actually enhance people's experience because being part of daos or projects, one of the most common questions I see asked by new users is a screenshot of those tools. And if one of the maybe 10 items that these tools are Analyzing has an X beside it. It really confuses some of those users, so I think that would be great for them to check out the tool. What are some other hidden gems within the app that you think most users don't know about or maybe aren't taking advantage of right now?
- [48:38]
A
Sure.
- [48:39]
D
I told you about the Time Machine feature which is I would call a hidden gem because it's only available to our Degen customers. Another gem I would call Wallet Analyzer feature which analyzes the wallets and basically shows for example the other addresses your wallet interacted with and how much you have sent and received from one wallet on another. Like top five addresses you have received or sent money to. Another interesting feature I would definitely would like to highlight here which is not really hidden, but again we support over 1500 DeFi protocols on pretty much any chain to show your precise defy balances including Solana and all the all the EVMs. I don't think there is a good tool out there as a competitor who supports showing defy balances for all those many chains and I would definitely would like to highlight another feature which allows you to see how much fees you paid to an exchange at a certain period of time or or gas fees you can pull connect your wallet address and see how much gas fees you paid and it aggregates across all your wallets across all your exchange accounts and you have one aggregated view instead of checking separately for each wallet and you can include that in your reports as well.
- [50:14]
C
Very cool.
- [50:16]
J
So what's your long term vision for the crypto ecosystem?
- [50:23]
D
Sure, our long term vision is to utilize the AI technologies and bring every the power of financial stability with crypto and power of making good financial decisions in crypto to most of the users. We've been in a business for pretty long and we have a pretty incentive data showing that most of the retail customers most of the customers, our customers are retail basically they they basically lose money, they don't sell on bull markets, they buy late, etc. Etc. Significant percentage of our customers lose money because they don't apply basic financial rules which are available and known to humanity for many hundreds of years and probably hundreds of years, not hundreds but if you if you can bring that tutoring and education with the power of AI which knows everything about yourself, your portfolio etc in a secure way to an average coin says customer that would be deal breaker for them and they can leverage that to to get into better results in in crypto trading, basically get more money selling the right time etc. Etc. It definitely won't help you to find the next,000x meme coin, but it will help to generate a long term wealth with crypto with the right investments.
- [52:04]
J
Very cool. And one thing I'd like to know is how many people are using your app right now weekly. Like what are your daily average user numbers?
- [52:14]
D
I can share monthly, active users, around 800,000 people open the app monthly or our website. And over $100 billion is being tracked with Coinstats today.
- [52:30]
J
Wow, that's incredible. So just a kudos to what your team's been able to accomplish. Those user numbers you don't typically see within crypto products. And just round of applause for you guys being able to accomplish that thus far. With about 6,500 people here now tuning in, what would your call to action be? Where do you want us to send people today?
- [52:54]
D
Sure, I would definitely love if anyone tuned in can go to the App Store or Google Play, search for Coinstats, download the app, sign up, complete the onboarding, connect their wallets, and you can do that both anonymously, you don't need to provide your email address, etc, you can just log in with your wallet, connect all your wallets, and as soon as you pass that sign up phase of setting up your account, which can be a bit time consuming, especially when you have multiple wallets and exchange accounts, you, you basically become free of knowing what's going on with your crypto. I know a lot of people who don't use something like Coinstats and they, they open this, exchange that wallet, etc. To understand what's going on. And you'll start receiving automatic notifications if there is some breaking news about your coin, if there is some significant price change about that coin or this coin you own, etc. And basically you get full picture on what's going on. You can see how much money you've made, you've lost. You can basically see in the past, even if you bought and sold some coin, how much you've lost. So you get a lot of information. You just need to have spent time to pause that onboarding phase to connect all your accounts. And you can also do that on our website Coinstats app.
- [54:28]
J
Wonderful. So for people who are tuning in, we have the Coinstats account up here in a speaker spot with that square icon. So if you click their profile and go there, they do have a link in their bio. It's Coinstats app X. And if you follow that official link, you'll be able to download the app directly from there, just want to make sure that people are staying safe and they're following official links. But Narek, I really appreciate you joining us today. Hopefully we can get you back on the show because this is such a great project that provides a great utility for people in the Web3 space. And it was a pleasure to have you.
- [55:04]
D
Pleasure to be here. Would love to join you again to talk more about portfolio management and the right way to manage your wealth and get the most out of the crypto markets.
- [55:16]
J
Thank you very much, everybody. Give a follow to not only Narek, but Coin Stats as well, as well as all the speakers up here. And we'll be back live tomorrow at 10:15am Eastern Time. See you then.