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- [02:54]
A
Well, good morning everyone. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Yesterday we saw an announcement from the CFTC and SEC that effectively creates what we, what they call token taxonomy, meaning that most of the major cryptos are not securities. And they laid out what would be a security, what would not be, when it's an investment contract, when it isn't. And the biggest issue that people in the industry are facing is will this be codified, could it be undone, and what will the rules be around all the various categories as we move forward? That said, it's a big deal and of course, given the fact that we have an FOMC meeting today and we have a war going on, the market doesn't seem to care and, and we sell off. Is it a sell off on the news, etc. You know, whatever it is. But there's a lot to talk about today and it is, it's one of those things that it's so logical. What they effectively have said that it is very hard to both underestimate it. It's also very hard to say that, that this is what is absolutely necessary. So, you know, there's, there's many takes. Most people are basically happy. You know, it ranges from the XRP army saying, yeah, hey, you know, we told you, you know, Ethereum, etc. You know, there's no longer Ethereum Special or Bitcoin special, etc. Etc. But it is going to be one of those things that as things march forward, you will end up with a regime in, in the United States that will allow for crypto innovation. What form it takes is a different story. And we have a lot of people up here today. I don't have a particular concern, you know, we could talk about what the market's doing, we could talk about that. I don't see any, any lawyers or any hands up here. I was seeing, we're trying to see if I can get Meta Lawman to, to join us because I know he's been commenting about this sort of thing. But the truth is, is it will matter because investment, like certainty and a lot of money that has been sidelined or left the United States to go to various places is, you know, could potentially come back, particularly given the, you know, what's going on in the Middle east and what's going on in the UAE right now. So it's an interesting time. William, what are your thoughts?
- [05:14]
B
Yeah, a quick read on the document, on that document. And it is quite a complex document. It really requires careful reading. What I took out of it is that it is Somehow biased towards infrastructure, meaning that what they are saying is the safest tokens look like infrastructure. So most of the, if not all of the examples they gave were infrastructure tokens. And they are saying the riskiest ones look like a business. And they, they did give a pass to those that have already been out, as you know. But it doesn't mean that the road is clear going forward. It was illegal interpretation basically and you still have to do your homework. And what I'm a bit worried about is what's going to happen to experimentation. I was hoping that they would allow tokens to experiment a little bit more, maybe for one, two, three years like a safe harbor. There was no safe harbor included in this particular note, so I wonder if that's going to come later. I would like to see more leniency towards experimentation beyond just infrastructure.
- [06:44]
A
Well, yeah, I thought I saw another release or another headline that they were going to be putting in certain safe harbors. I mean I think that there's a lot of work to be done. William, the safe harbor, you basically need the taxonomy first. And then depending on who has the authority, both the cftc, which has effectively no regulatory infrastructure whatsoever for non derivatives, will need to create rules and a regime and the SEC will need to in all likelihood either use safe harbors or no actions, but most likely rewrite a few of the rules that effectively make it very, very hard for securities. Because one of the things they do want is, and Paul Atkins has said this repeatedly, is he wants to allow for tokenized securities, not just tokenization of stocks, but also tokens that provide value to investors to have a path to the market. And right now we all understand that there's a variety of reasons why being called a security is quote a death sentence. So that has to follow up. The one thing that I'll say is there's a lot of work to be done and they have three years to do it. And that's not easy. I mean you may think the three years is a lot of time, but in SEC parlance, not really. It takes just the public comment period alone once they've actually created a rule, can make a rule take two, three, four years to get implemented. So it's going to be difficult. Brian, I see your hand up.
- [08:18]
C
Hey.
- [08:19]
D
Yes. Was just going to say Atkins was speaking yesterday. He said the SEC will propose a formal rule to implement this interpretation in a week or two and that proposal will include a safe harbor. So I do think it is coming, I guess more generally to me, like this is pretty massive. So I mean this is super obvious but you know, we're finally providing like clear guidance for builders, innovators and entrepreneurs. And we're moving away from this regulation by enforcement regime that we had for so long. It also proclaimed that most crypto assets are not securities. So builders can be confident that they're not running afoul of securities laws. I also think that this enables non security crypto assets that were sold as part of an investment contract to cease being part of an investment contract. And so I'm not a lawyer, but I think there's some potential for them to stop being securities once the sale and delivery of the tokens actually occurs. And then it also obviously clarified mining, staking and wrapping activities and airdrops, which I think will be important. The devil will be in the details. It'll take a while to flesh out but I think like they're obviously moving on it. And then lastly, I actually think that this can actually help Clarity pass. I think they're providing this rule based framework for key issues and the SEC will implement this, you know, pretty soon with the formal rule proposal in a week or two, which I actually think could spur Congress to want to have more input via legislation. So I'm looking at this as pretty massive progress and a really big step forward for the industry.
- [09:59]
A
Yeah, I think that it is a big step. Obviously there's more steps to go. The interesting point that you just made about will it help get Clarity done, I mean I think that the Democrats are smart enough at this point, smart, clever, whatever, non self destructive enough to know that pushing innovation offshore is probably a bad idea. And one way or another, you know, it's a question of the banks. This whole stablecoin yield thing is just. It annoys me because it's such a silly issue in retro fully but you know, we'll see how it is. I mean the fact is that the crypto side does have money. The popular, the real thing they don't want to have happen is be able to be tagged by being obstreperous in. In for. For this while the major firms have already gone to adopt it. I mean the PR on this is, is. Is complex. I mean Austin, I was trying to put. Thank you for the hand also because I literally wanted was. Was trying to to poke you. I don't really want to talk about the Vanity Fair article but, but I. What are your thoughts here rather than me putting words in your mouth?
- [11:09]
E
Well, yeah, so one thing I would say is money does not solve your problems as a lobby. If you're misaligned with what the voters want. Right. I think this has been one of the great misunderstandings, not just for crypto, but for people in general, which is to say money is an accelerant. If what you're doing is in line with what people want or in line with what's popular, money to push, the message will help. Right. So when you saw Stand with Crypto, seeing major gains around how odious like Gensler was being, okay, this makes total sense to me. Most people found that really bad. But I would say many of the specific concerns around Clarity are much more niche and much more fragmentary. And I would also tell you one of the big bugbears for the Democrats, which is the ethics thing around World Liberty and Trump is not like a clean issue in the way that Gensler's thing was. That's going to, you know, divide a super majority on one side.
- [12:08]
A
So I think, you know, as we're
- [12:10]
E
looking at the possibility. Well, as we're looking at the possibility of Clarity passing, getting good rules in a taxonomy to answer some of these questions definitely is helpful. What I don't know, Dave, is does it solve some of the core problems around the ethics thing, or does it really solve the problem with the bank lobby that I have some doubts about, if that makes sense.
- [12:34]
A
No, it does. I mean, look, well, the bank. Let's talk about the ethics thing, because there's an. Whether or not the administration will go for it is the real issue. There is such an obvious grand bargain that basically would ban, in terms of insider trading on stocks as well at the same time as issuance of crypto and banning politicians or elected politicians or candidates from issuing, you know, meme tokens. Now that there's a taxonomy, it becomes way easier to define that because you need the legal taxonomy to do that. But it would seem to me that an obvious grand bargain would make sense. Now, World Liberty is different because that's a operating business. And it's hard to understand. Has there ever been. There's been many, many politicians, you know, presidents, you know, senators, whatever, have children, relatives who run operating businesses. And it's hard to understand how that is any different than anything else. But in terms of issuing like a Trump token or Melania token or this token or that token that is directly aligned to the. With the nil, you know, name, whatever. I forgot the I stands for in likeness, you know, of the politician, that would seem to be an easy do. Right. I mean, I don't know if anyone would go for it, but I mean, you Know, is that even being talked about or they just. That they have to get through the banking issues before they even get there?
- [14:00]
E
I think right now they have to get through the banking issues because if it dies on the banking issues, that's much less politically contentious than if it dies on the ethics issues. So you got to clear that rock first. I think the hard part on the ethics side is there's probably some compromise to be made in the Senate that would tie in, call it federal non ownership of crypto projects along with reforms around things like congressional stock trading. And we've seen comments around that standpoint moving out into the world. I think there is a bargain there. But Dave, you hit the nail on the head. Would the President then sign that if it forces him to divest from all the crypto ventures or his family? Because yeah, I mean the Torres amendment as written is probably unconstitutional, but you could add language around acting in concert, then the Trumps have a problem. So that, that's the one. Whereas I watch Clarity moving. I don't think the SEC efforts help with that. And I haven't seen anything that's an unlock.
- [14:58]
A
Yeah, but the one point that is important is this taxonomy as well stated as it is. It would be really hard for a future SEC to undo this. To go back to what Gensler did and basically say okay, we were just kidding. Businesses that are now planning based upon the fact that you can be an investment contract and there's a clear path to not being it. You know, once rules are proposed and are final. Undoing a rule. It's been done before but every time I know that it's been done has been because there's been a reason or a demonstrable change. Because if there isn't a demonstrable change, I mean once again it's too bad that there's no, none of the lawyers are up here. Without that it's really hard. I mean like things like there used to be an uptick rule on short selling but you know that doesn't really affect people's business, you know. And then they got rid of it and they put in reg show and I was involved in all of that. So I, I remember it happening. I can't think of any time the SEC has ever reversed something that businesses depended upon. I mean can you. Can anybody
- [16:13]
E
only, only some of the post 2008 guidance purely because they actually wanted them to stop doing a lot of that stuff.
- [16:20]
A
Right. But. But it wasn't. So I think that, you know, look, Clarity, we talk about why does, why Is clarity important? Clarity is important because there are certain sets of businesses that banks, compliance departments are telling their people listen, we can't do this until, until it's in law. But it depends on, on which pieces. Right? You know, that's really, that's really the thing that matters. I mean if you're talking about, you're, you're trying to, if the SEC tells FINRA you should approve broker dealers to be able to trade non securities so that they can trade both crypto and, and, and, and securities on the same platform. I mean for those who don't know, Robin Hood for example, quite famously offers both, but they do so through an unrelated affiliate that's not FINRA regulated. And you know, if, if their guidance changes, that's a very big unlock because I don't think you're going to be that that's one of those things that you can't undo it once it's done. So I guess, I guess we'll see. Anybody else care any more about, about what's going on with, with this act and where it goes? I mean, Williams, you know.
- [17:30]
B
Yeah. Just a quick comment because you mentioned World Liberty. I'm not sure what you had in mind, but based on that framework, World Liberty would be in the sight of the SEC and would not pass any of these tests because the question becomes about looking at the spectrum of economic dependence and profit expectation and the, that that project is definitely run with that expectation and very centrally so it would not. So I wonder like what's going to happen to, to wlfi?
- [18:12]
A
Well, I think from my perspective, I think World Liberty is in the same boat as several other tokens when they, this is the thing my, the, the drum I'm always beating on which is at which point is there a clear expectation of value and clear disclosure to investors and tokens, what the value is coming from. And to the extent that it's correlated to revenues that are being earned by a company or a foundation or even if it's a distributed set of revenues, it is hard to understand in this taxonomy how it wouldn't be a digital security, which is why that safe harbor matters so much and why the actual rules are going to matter. That that's my take. I don't know if that's true or not. But you know, I'm curious. I mean you, you, we, we need to see the rule proposal that's supposedly coming before we get there. I mean this was basically the announcement, but the devil's going to be in the details, at least I think so okay, so FOMC today and. And markets down. I mean, today we have a day that it's. The correlations are weird, right? Oil is up and is everything else down? Well, gold is certainly down and bitcoin is down. Stock markets are soft, but they're not down that much. But seems to be that everything. It's oil versus everything else. But is there anything the FOMC can say today that matters or all eyes on the war. I mean, Mike, obviously, Mike McGlone, you're up here. Obviously. Oil prices are what everyone is worrying about as well as infrastructure and what's going on. I'm curious, does anyone really care? The expectation is they're going to do nothing. The dot plot is going to basically be frozen in amber and we're probably not going to hear a whole heap.
- [20:00]
C
Yeah, Dave, you nailed it. No one cares about fomc. It's all about crude oil right now. And what's happening today and even this year is reminding me of that old mantra I learned when I was at a hedge fund like two decades ago, that bear markets can take money from everyone. And the only thing that's really up this year is broad commodities. Bloomberg Commodity index is up 25% in 2008. In July it was up 30% and ended up the year down 36%. And I think that's what's happening this year. Every trader in the planet knows what's happening. Crude oil is significantly oversupplied before this attack. And after it's cleared up, once we've secured the straight, which I'm making, that as a statement will happen, then crude oil will collapse. And I do believe with Mr. Trump on that now, if it doesn't, it's just going to be worse later because this is right now a global energy crisis, recessionary trajectory. But the key thing I want to put in context is if you started talking about tokens and people know I've been quite bearish in most risk assets for a while. So let's talk about a very most significant positive trend I've enjoyed in cryptos forever, and that is the proliferation of crypto dollars. Tether has flipped into everything. It's number three. I think it's going to flip into theory in this year and maybe bitcoin next year. That's the statement of fact of a trend in my extrapolation to the future. What stops that, I don't know. But I look at this simplistically. Well, triple is. This is crypto town hall. We are in a bear market. You're supposed to sell rallies in bear markets. Respect the bear. We've had a bitcoin bounce from 60 back to 74. Thank you very much. I still think 74 is the first place to reset shorts although still well below the 200 day moving average which I need to point out if you look at some of the indicators my key indicator last year was in microstrategy tilted over. Now we have bitcoin tilted over. Now we have the stock market tilting over. Just look at the S&P 500100 day moving average. It's right around 68. We're below that. We just bounced on the 200 day moving average and volatility is still there. 180 day volatile still near almost a decade low. So I look at this year's to me it's becoming my. My mantra remains it's a risk off year. You should be looked to respect that the overweight US Treasuries and look to trade markets responsibly. Now I haven't seen a decent. Yeah, bitcoin had a good bounce from six people. That's a bear market bounce so far in most risk assets. I don't see why with the reason to buy them yet until they have decent discounts and I'll just review my key levels. I still think silver's key key resistance around 100 is going to build momentum and it's starting to do that. Copper key resistance around six, six dollars is going to build momentum. It's continuing to do that. It just made a new low on the year. I think if you've been lucky enough to be short it you cover around five now. I don't trade anymore. I just suggest levels and even crude oil. Crude oil looks like it put a peak in around 120. Just staying above that level is just so global recessionary and ultimately deflationary. I look at this as a great opportunity for traders and that's what crypto people should be doing trading and selling rallies and I don't see any reason to break out of that mantra. And what's happened with Iran I think it was going to accelerate. To me it really reminds me of what some of the inklings of 9 11. This is going to shut off global consumer spending and pivot with people are really starting to get scared of AI losing, you know, taking their jobs. We know all AI is severely deflationary. So I'll end with this. Right now Bitcoin's down about 20% I think by the end of the year it's going to be down 50 to 60%. Right now the S&P 500 is down 2%. I think by the end of the year it's going to be down 10 to 20% and crude oil is up 70%. By the end of the year that front contract will probably be down 20%. That's a simple 2008 type scenario. But so far I don't see any reason to break out of that mantra. And again if end of the Q1 happens soon and I look at this year as you're supposed to be selling the opening in potential, looking to buy the close and I don't see a reason to get out of that to reverse that mantra yet until proven wrong.
- [23:53]
A
Yeah. What do you make of since you're the commodity guy up here, what do you make of the fact that we were talking about two days ago crude West Texas and Brent in oil had narrowed to a $2 spread which was well below normal. And today it's up to $10 which is actually above normal.
- [24:10]
C
Yeah, you nailed that Dave. In macromoney this is exactly what's happening in global the western hemisphere led by the US is now the price maker in crude oil and natural gas. US is the largest producer and net exporter. Trump gets it market, the world gets it. And one thing that really struck me on Sunday night when we first started it was when both crude and WTI, I'm sorry WTI and Brent peaked at 120. That was a classic case of just get me out of all my shorts. Most notably WWTI and and now it's at 99 and bread's at 109. Now those are front contracts. The key thing is you have to look up markets, you know, always trade to where the pucks go. And in crude when you have backwardation that's a pretty significant where the pucks go and contangle is normal, this is really less normal. But it's been the case since 2022 that front like these contract which will be front month right before when Mr. Trump you know right before the midterms it's running around 78 or so. The mean the high volume price since that first started trading almost 10 years ago is 53. And that's when US was a net importer of just a net importer. Crude and liquid fuels near 3 million barrels a day. Now our net exporter near 3 million barrels a day. So this everything here is very much advantaged us. The problem is we walked into this war with stock market volatility very low and the stock market cap to GDP very high. I think we're just reverting some of those things and I'll end what I think is to me this is what we're going to look back in the futures. DAVID GOLD FRONT Rennes Gold's rally last year was so unusual. I mean some of us are lucky to be on top of it. But to have a rally like that, the best in almost 50 years with inflation just buried below 3% CPI. Now obviously it's picked up a little bit but last time we did that type of rally was 1979. Inflation peaked at 15%. But you can look back right now and say gold warned us, gold warned us this was happening. And the Chinese way really adding to their strategic petroleum reserve was other another indication that something was going on. Now we're seeing the event and gold is selling, selling off and I think it's going to continue potentially head towards $4,000 an ounce because it's still expensive. But the key thing I really find striking is what is the stuff that really concerns me when I see people getting way enthusiastic about what they did buying cryptos last year and all the people, the retail people ask about how to buy gold this year and silver. That's when I always put up my red flag and say that we put in pretty good significant peaks in the metals just like cryptos last year. And I'll end with what I started. Bear markets can take money from everybody and 2% in S&P 500 is nothing.
- [26:45]
A
Yeah, I mean I think that that is fair. I mean I obviously I don't necessarily agree but I don't want to make this the Dave and Mike argue show so I'd rather, I'd rather try to broaden the conversation. You know what is fascinating to me is if you told me that, I mean that we'd have a down day after yesterday's news and I wouldn't have been that surprised. But if you told me that the altcoins which would actually be underperforming bitcoin today showing normal beta that I do find a bit surprising. So I'm curious, anyone else care or looking or is this just basic people sell markets, you know, taking profit, whatever from a nice little bounce that we've had. I mean, you know, it's like I've said it many times, I mean ether bitcoin has been at 0.030 something you know, that has tended to be that pivot level. We talked about it last week but whatever. Anyway, I finally see some hands I didn't see tomer Were you first or gator first?
- [27:50]
F
I think I beat him by like 1/10,000th of a second.
- [27:53]
A
Okay, good. Having run plenty of high frequency trading businesses in my life, we're going to front random. There you go.
- [28:01]
F
I, I think this is kind of where you're going. It's. We, we saw like at a much more micro economic level, we saw billions of dollars from strategy flow into Bitcoin in the last couple of weeks. We saw maybe 100 million from Tom Lee's company Bit Mine flow into Ethereum. And yet we saw the alts grow more than Bitcoin. And that is, that's a, for me, that's a real head scratcher. I can't, I can't make sense of it on a fundamental microeconomic level. When you see like there has to be big sellers of bitcoin only and buyers of Ethereum in order for Bitcoin to not significantly outperform. So there's something strange going on which is, which is hard to explain and, and I would say unsustainable. So at least today with a bit of a sell off, seeing more of a sell off on the alts, the higher beta that you were referring to is bringing me back to a world that I can make sense of. But there's something, there's some other shoe waiting to drop. And whether that's a correction downward in the price of alts or a big correction upwards in the price of Bitcoin or this market somehow absorbs this and we, we have to come to terms with the fact that billions of dollars publicly into Bitcoin is offset by something else. Is, is, is what I guess a lot of us are trying to figure out or make sense of at least.
- [29:33]
A
Yeah, I mean, you know, look it, it's failure at the 74 actually went up as high as 76, but it doesn't matter. But you know, it falling at that level effectively tells you that we're still in a trading range. And you know, you're seeing like the last couple hours have been very heavy, you know, dropping from 74 down to 71 and a half, you know, effectively since in the last three hours. You know why? I mean it could be as simple as strategy has stopped buying for the week because they're done. You know, when we see next Monday's print, my guess is you're going to see a number that they acquired, whatever the hell they acquired at a, at an average price of 74. And if that's true, then, you know, the rest of the week is likely to be soft and then we'll, you know, we'll lather, rinse, repeat on the weekend going into Monday and Tuesday when the STRC funds are available. Now, if that is true, then my public service announcement to Saylor and Fong Li is they really should figure out how to trade better and I'm happy to help them. Given the fact that that's what I know how to do. I strongly hope that I'm wrong. But if I'm right, then these guys really do need to figure out how to better, best better deploy capital. Because as asset managers they may be fine, but as traders they would be terrible. So not knowing what's actually happening, I just think that it's important to understand and it does matter. Anyway, Gator, you had your hand up. Sorry. That's all right.
- [31:00]
G
Thank you. I fully agree with what you guys are saying. I also think the market moves in, in relatively strange ways. But I do see, and this is maybe my own bubble, I'm not 100% sure, I'm mostly into the RWA and deepin space myself, but I do see some sort of fatigue amongst the people in the alt crypto space where, you know, nowadays altcoins don't all move along with the tide, so to say, when a rising tide, there's too many altcoins for that. And that is already the case for quite some time now. Now I see that because of that, because of this thin liquidity basically for altcoins, it's also becoming harder for really big moves in altcoins. And I believe, despite the regulatory clarity from the SEC in this week, that altcoins really don't have as much attention at the moment as they have in a bull market. And I'm noticing that this lack of attention for it and lack of activity in telegram channels, etcetera, of altcoins has not increased yet. And therefore, I think despite the positive news, we're not seeing big moves on altcoins because they're also not as available as Bitcoin or Ethereum on broader markets. Looking at Solana, for example, you do see a move there after they got more clarity from the sec, but you don't see it on the smaller altcoins.
- [32:31]
F
And
- [32:34]
G
I believe this to be the case due to some sort of fatigue in the market and the crap market that we're currently seeing also with bitcoin trading in a certain range still.
- [32:43]
A
Well, I mean, there's no doubt that the alt markets have been in a bear Market since October 10th at a bare minimum. Right? I mean, it's been, it's brutal, you know, so you know, it was funny. I'm gonna reference the Vanity Fair article, you know that where they, they kind of said well and I think the crypto pros call it crypto winter as they play on Game of Thrones, which I find amusing because we all do use that. Although I guess that's where it came from. Winter is coming.
- [33:11]
G
Yeah.
- [33:12]
A
But the truth is is it's been very cold in the altcoin space. Right. You know, and you can look at with it with a few exceptions. I mean, you know where they have. It hasn't done too bad. But most of them are, are most of the charts look the same now Some of them in my opinion are valueless. Like, like there's no reason to own them. And I say some, I would actually put like 95 plus percent of them but fully agree. But that's, you know, that's neither here nor there. I mean the difference is unlike an operating company, a crypto that basically the foundation abandons it and leaves it there. There's no cost to leave it on exchanges and it's an asset so people will trade it. Whereas an operating company who has to do filings, et cetera, they die because they get dissolved. So it is, it is different. So I think I saw Brian first and then William and then Tomer, maybe a shadow hand on Tomer side. But anyway Brian, I'm pretty sure you were next.
- [34:06]
D
Yeah, I was just going to say I think Gator hit it on the head. I think that there's just a lack of interest in the space at the moment. Things are not necessarily moving on fundamentals and they're trading more programmatically according to betas. So smaller altcoins down more than the majors, down more than bitcoin. I think the biggest issue for the altcoins just speaking about today is just the ppi. So inflation came in much hotter than expected. I think what was a bit worrying about it is the increase was really due to higher services. So. So most folks had kind of attributed to the run up inflation, to the tariffs and thinking that that could be transitory. But with it being more services related with today's print think it means it could be a bit more sticky. And then none of the recent inflation reports actually include the impact of the war in Iran. So I think like overall in general the markets are reacting mostly to this inflation print today.
- [35:02]
A
Yeah, I mean it certainly looks that way. Although when inflation is higher generally gold does well and, and it's getting waxed today. So that's, that's the one, the one strange thing to see the precious metals down 3% on a day like that. It is, I don't know what it's reacting to. I think that the one thing that's, that's been hitting gold. Well, a couple things have been hitting gold. First of all, all the people trying to get money out of Dubai and that is a big deal by the way, that it's not incredibly well reported. But you know, there's, you know, I've had multiple people DM me telling me that discounts, when you go to sell your gold in Dubai to try to get dollars and, or to buy stable coins to be able to be moving it, it's trading at a significant discount. I don't know if silver's being impacted by that, but whenever gold drops, silver tends to drop more. So I do think that is a non trivial aspect of what's happening there and I'm curious what people think. But in any case, who's next? I think it was Homer and then William.
- [36:06]
F
Well, I didn't really have my hand up, but just as a quick comment, everyone was talking about silver just a month or two ago about how crucial an industrial metal it is. But when you don't have oil, all the other industrial commodities become hard to apply.
- [36:26]
A
The supply chains go bad, you can't produce, you're not demanding. It's really that simple. I mean, I know it sounds dumb but. Yeah, I think that's right. I think actually given that it's held in there very well, you know, it hasn't fallen nearly as far, but yeah, it's, look, this is oil is the
- [36:44]
F
oil of the world, right? Like oil is the grease that makes the world's economy move. And it's, and it, it will be for the foreseeable future. Even, even when we get electric cars and all this other stuff, it's all, we're not going to get electric ships, we're not going to get, we're just not going to be able to move away from oil for the foreseeable future unless there's some striking innovation adaptation of like portable, you know, modular nuclear reactors produced en masse.
- [37:15]
A
But even then, I think that even then you still, you're using it in plastics and petrochemicals and when you talk with supply chains, it is, it is far, far more embedded than people think. Even if, I mean like I drive an electric car and I, I, I monitor battery technologies and whatnot and we're gonna, they're gonna be Less, less, you know, it will, it will happen, but it's still, you know, for a very long time.
- [37:41]
F
It might lead to a 3% decline in the demand and use of oil and oil related products.
- [37:46]
A
Right.
- [37:47]
F
A mass. It's just like when you look at this sheer size of everywhere that oil gets used and how much of it there is, it's, it's colossal and, and not threatened by disruption.
- [37:59]
C
Right.
- [37:59]
F
From batteries and wool and stuff.
- [38:02]
A
Right. William, was that hand a shadow hand or a real one?
- [38:06]
B
No, no, a real one. I wanted to say, I think one of the factors is that people are realizing that the Iran situation is going to take longer. It's not going to be solved over the next few days necessarily. So that is a factor. The second thing I was going to say, David, you made a comment about, we were talking about altcoins. I did some analysis actually yesterday about the top coins in market cap. Do you know how many coins it takes to reach 96%, 96% of the total market cap of crypto? 90.
- [38:42]
F
Well, when Bitcoin is worth 60, 58%.
- [38:46]
B
Yeah, but we know, we know that bitcoin has a big dog. 56.
- [38:50]
F
But yeah, I guess, I guess 99 or like probably only 30%.
- [38:55]
B
But the point is it only takes 90, the next 89 coins to reach 96% of the market. And, and this is what matters. The attention should be say at the top 100, the others, I mean, it's really irrelevant right now. If we can't make sense out of the top 100 coins, whatever you want to call them, then we shouldn't be even analyzing the market.
- [39:40]
F
Is anyone speaking?
- [39:42]
E
I think Dave might be trying to, but he's still on mute.
- [39:45]
F
Yeah, Dave, you're muted if you're trying to.
- [39:48]
A
Yeah, sorry guys, I just got jumped by something. Yeah, I think that's true. Obviously, you know, 100 is a big number. I mean, you know, it's really hard for me, me to look past, you know, even past into the top 30 or 35 really for anything. Anyway, Gator, you had your hand up next, I think.
- [40:10]
G
Yeah, just I wanted to quickly go back to the earlier point about oil. I think, you know, even if we would have the innovations to move past oil and oil usage and need for our world, that would only be initially at least something for the more developed countries, the established economies, so to say. I mean the US countries in Europe, some of them, some countries in Asia probably, but maybe in some sort of in Emirates for example. But initially, even if we would have the technology to not have to use oil anymore, as not rely on it as much as we do now. Even then it would take a long time before that gets adopted worldwide these technologies and especially in certain countries in the world. So I do believe that the dependency on oil as fuel for the economies will be there for a long time. And I'm a big, big fan of renewable technologies. But I do acknowledge that there is many things to overcome and we're not really at any real adoption of a technology that is environmentally friendly yet. I believe so. Just wanted to quickly catch back upon that.
- [41:32]
F
Can I add oil? I think the only dense, environmentally friendly alternative to, to oil is nuclear and it has, it has limited applications. But expecting wind or solar in the short term to be, to be able to scale up to the demands, just the energy demands, let alone all the product uses that Dave alluded to is mathematically just wild.
- [42:08]
G
I agree. I'm an energy consultant and I fully agree. I, I see it in the field I'm active in and it's definitely not easy to, to go into the energy transition. I've seen people try with solar energy, wind energy, and each of them has their own disadvantages and let alone talking about the grid stability and energy safety and certainty, I think there is a lot, long, long way to go there and nuclear is the one way that we can do it.
- [42:41]
F
One thing that we haven't heard that much talk about in the last, let's say, six months, ever since the AI craze has taken over, is the role of bitcoin in stabilizing energy grids or in being a pioneer species in the development of energy in new areas. I want, you know, I wonder if it's still going on or if it was just a lot of rhetoric in the first place. It certainly had a big boost when bitcoin was, was on the run up. I'm, I'm just curious if anybody's hearing anything with respect to that because bitcoin still, of all the coins bitcoin runs, is the only one that runs on energy that's in the top 35. Right. And to the extent that any others run on energy collectively between the whole of them, they don't produce one, they don't consume 1% as much energy as bitcoin. So that's a very unique characteristic of bitcoin amongst crypto.
- [43:38]
A
Well, yeah, but it's not just the consumption, it's the way it consumes is very relevant. Right. You know, especially, you know, this is.
- [43:46]
F
Well, exactly, yeah.
- [43:48]
A
How many countries are having grid problems Right now. And having Bitcoin as a significant contributor to, to a, you know, to the energy use in a country will allows for, because it could be shut off, allows for stabilizing grids when there's instability. And so that's, that is a non trivial thing that everyone who just says oh my God, we're just using too much energy. I know you're not like this, Tomer. I know you agree with me 100% so don't. This isn't meant as a criticism but it's meant for the audience to understand that I don't think that attack vector on Bitcoin is going to work for much anymore. I think that.
- [44:24]
F
No, it's almost, my question is almost the opposite. Like shouldn't we, given that the attack vector has gone away because Silicon Valley now supports big data centers which means it's not bad for the environment anymore through woke logic. But do we now then see the flip side which is genuine support for Bitcoin as a load balancing grid stabilization technology that supports power generation or grid stabilization in all sorts of economies?
- [44:54]
A
I mean, I think so. Matt, you raised your hand so I'm guessing you're going to have a full throated agreement there.
- [44:59]
H
Yeah, I'm going to have to say yeah. And that's just going to continue to grow Bitcoin's role in that. So I would just continue to. To me the power is the issue. Power really is the bottleneck. Whether that compute is used for AI and data centers or whether that's for bitcoin mining, power is the bottleneck. There are already bitcoin mining companies going off grid, tapping the stranded energy and renewables. So that's, that's pretty cool. But my, I wanted to circle back really quick on why, why some folks and talk me off the ledge here why some folks think this Iran might take longer. He's got a 60 day clock, doesn't he? On this war powers resolution. Congress has to give him the declaration of war. He's got 60 days and he's got to wrap this thing up. And I don't think Congress is going to give him the support he needs. So I think I'm leaning more to the side. I think he's got to wrap this up within the 60 days here on the war powers. That's just my two cents.
- [45:51]
F
Yeah, I'm not a geopolitics expert but I, I don't think laws matter when it comes to international affairs, these kinds of things. There's a lot of debate on televised news networks and Such. But once you're in it, you can't just pull out like there's a fire. Once you started a fire, if someone says you have to stop, you're gonna, you have to stop trying to fight it. After 60 days and it's still raging, you still fight the fire.
- [46:19]
H
Yeah, yeah. But I, I just can't see how he's going to get congressional support for this military action. And so I. Somehow this has got to come to an end. And if it drags out longer, man, it's. It's going to be tough on a lot of us.
- [46:32]
F
It does, it does sound like aspects of it are slowing down. Like the rocket launches from Iran. This, I'm saying, because I have relatives in various places in the Middle East. They say that the quantity of rocket. There's basically constant air raid sirens, but the quantity of rockets that are even launched is very much diminished. So if it continues to diminish or run out, maybe there's some settlement. But I'm not a geopolitics expert.
- [47:06]
A
The sad reality is almost everyone on this platform could be. Can make that same statement. They are not a geopolitics expert. Except most people keep insisting that they, that they comment as if they are. So, you know, it's funny, I get a lot of heat from people because they keep saying we don't know what's actually happening. And obviously we know some of the things that are happening. Right. You know, but there's a lot of stuff that we don't know. And you know, you look at the news flow and it is. I mean, what is news? I mean, today the big deal is attacking natural gas and creating blackouts in Iraq and various and sundry other things being leaked. And look, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. It's just that simple. The only things that are obvious are constant air raid sirens, which throughout the region, not just in Israel. Israel's used to it. Right. I hate to say it, but it happens all the time. But the UAE is having serious issues and I'm sure some of the other countries are having serious issues with all the expats fleeing. And that's an expat led economy. And so there are issues there. Yeah.
- [48:12]
B
Matt.
- [48:15]
H
Oh, no, I. Sorry, was that a phantom hand there?
- [48:17]
D
Sorry.
- [48:17]
A
Oh, really? Because it just flashed up. It was black. I mean, you know, you host a bunch of spaces. I mean, whatever. But anyway, you know, it's like we keep talking about the same stuff day after day. You know, I kind of think that the most Important stories tend not to move markets when they happen. They tend to move markets when people believe. My view on the SEC story, by the way, is that people are like, yeah, okay, this is cool, but I'm not putting any more money in on the margin until I actually see where things are going. But that it's a huge deal for the companies that are actually working on things. Things. Right. You know, I think that's the bigger deal. So I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of founders out there who are like, okay, I can cut my legal expenses or I can do this, I can do that. And you can make business decisions now, but those business decisions don't show up in investable opportunities for months, if not years. So I think that, that. So anyone who expected to see a major crypto rally today on the basis of that, I think you're being swamped by the geopolitics, to be honest. But if you're in the private side, I think it's very different if you're an angel investor now or if you're looking at M and A now. I think M and A just got a lot easier and people don't realize how important that is. But that's not something that's. That's investable immediately. That's the way I would look at it. I'm just curious. Anybody else care?
- [49:45]
F
Yeah, I agree.
- [49:46]
I
I think the main messaging is that developers, innovators, entrepreneurs, it's safe to deploy your time and capital back into the space. I mean, that's the, you know, like we keep seeing, you know, all these, you know, announcements of the clarity acts coming soon. Like they're continuing to talk about it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. And it's just, they're trying to work it out. So I think these are just continual messaging saying, like, listen, don't go anywhere, be patient. Like, here's, you know, the commodities collectibles, those tools, stable coins, and then tradfi as securities. That's again, more verbal clarity. And they're just trying to make sure people know it's coming. Just give us time. But, like, we're, we're gonna get this, but just don't go anywhere. We, this is the most important space moving forward and we need you. So that's what I took from it.
- [50:39]
B
Yeah, but I mean, this is the tragedy we're in. We get overtaken by geopolitical and whatnot, interest rates and so on news, instead of taking care of our own destiny by just looking at what is positive. And that's why I was saying that if we focused only on pick a number 50, 40 significant coins or companies, that's really what matters. I mean today Tempo goes live on the main net. Yesterday Ethereum talked about a very fast finality. For example, I'm sure there take pick any, any coin. There are positive developments for each one of them and, and that's what should be what not, not just us talk about. But that's what the market should be talking about and, and not kind of be at the, at the whims of the, of the next crisis or the current crisis. Unfortunately, it is still a liquidity driven market which means that the money will come in and come out as they decide, not as we decide. Because a lot of people are very busy doing some good stuff in the industry. But those headlines, once in a while they pop their head but otherwise it's back to talking about oil and gas and war and interest rates and anything but crypto stuff.
- [52:10]
F
Unfortunately those are pretty important things though, William.
- [52:14]
I
Right.
- [52:14]
F
Like that's the reality. It's very easy to get distracted from the number 63 crypto token. And it's a very complex and convoluted story of how it's going to differently tokenize securities on a blockchain with second layer of smart contract. It's just it, people are tired of that talk and, and there's way too much fragmentation and alleged innovation. Right? Like the biggest part of the problem has been that the alleged innovation has been so swamped with innovation that turned out to be a scam or ineff.
- [52:54]
B
Ineffectively measured. I don't know that I agree 100% with what you said. These are not promises. Another one yesterday, five banks got together and they announced using ZK Sync to tokenize assets. And I mean these are real.
- [53:14]
F
But like announcements from banks are worth even less than the printed paper.
- [53:19]
B
This is adoption. I'm talking about adoption. This is not promises.
- [53:24]
F
An announcement from a bank is not adoption. There have been millions of announcements from banks going back to 2013 that they're going to form a consortium and do this and that and the other. So until there's actually something that launches and sticks.
- [53:38]
B
No, this is, this is launching.
- [53:39]
F
There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of noise. And it may be the case that this one announcement is real. But you have to appreciate that's in a world where we've seen tens of thousands of announcements of banks are doing this, but it's really just lip service because they're not really committed to the space or the technology that they've supported is, is not actually effective technology. And they've, it's the same Andreas used to say it's the same as companies that got onto the intranet when the Internet boom came. And there's just a lot of, there hasn't been that much effective sophistication. Like with the exception of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF, we don't really see anything that is mainstream Wall street banking embracing a bit.
- [54:25]
A
There's reasons for that though. But before I go off on a diatribe Brian, I thought I saw your hand up first. Is that real?
- [54:32]
D
Yeah, I was just gonna say I think that a lot of times in crypto we look at things and expect it to happen quickly. I think just looking at the history of technology, it literally takes decades for any new technology to reach final form. Like Internet invented in the 80s and it wasn't until mid 2000s when we got user generated content. Social networks also takes decades for people to change their behavior. I'm super optimistic and bullish that we're finally seeing institutions coming into the space and I actually think this is what we need. If we rely on this to be consumer driven it's going to just take 20, 30, 40 years. Whereas if big institutions come and they switch this on for us, they abstract it all behind and utilize the blockchain back end. But consumers actually don't know that. I actually think we could see mass adoption. And then lastly to your point Dave, on like good news not being incorporated into prices, I'd say like the MasterCard acquiring BVNK is a really great example. So not only are they bringing stablecoin and tokenized deposits to their customers and by the way, there's billions of card users around the world and hundreds that are accepted at hundreds of millions of merchants. But also the key thing to me is that this is a chain agnostic solution. So MasterCard didn't come in here, try to leverage their position to build their own chain and capture all the value. They're acquiring bvnk which is connected to all major blockchains and then it's the MasterCard customers that are going to get to choose which chain they use. And so I just think that this is a huge positive for public blockchains. I think a lot of the institutions really only dipped their toe because the rules weren't clear. And as this clarity continues to progress, I think they'll going to be forced to come in in a big way.
- [56:20]
A
Yeah, I want to Riff off of that a little bit. But Matt, was that a shadow hander? Is that a real.
- [56:24]
H
No, no, this is, this is a legit hand this time, Dave. Okay, good. Yeah. You know, one thing, and I think that was just a great point there. I think Brian was, was making. I want to go back in time just earlier to strategies big event there they had in Vegas where Nisha Sundarand, who's Citi's head of digital asset custody and development, the big presentation she made making Bitcoin bankable. Citi is already planning on rolling this out in Q3 and Q4. So regardless, to me, that indicates to me that the mindset is there, that the clarity act is going to get done, that something is going to happen. They wouldn't be putting all of this out and putting this presentation together and going on stage at MicroStrategy's big event going, this is what we're planning on doing if they didn't think it was going to get done. So I'm still really bullish that this thing does get done. I don't see the folks of Citibank spinning their wheels and doing this all for not.
- [57:15]
A
Yeah. I think that the most important thing that people need to understand about crypto, this is not a bitcoin situation, but it's about crypto, is whenever you look at a level one or an infrastructure token and you think this thing is going to become worth trillions, you need to ask yourself the question, why would the companies that are going to use this thing want the infrastructure to be worth more than the company? And the answer is, it doesn't. So the history of technology on Wall street and everywhere else is that the companies that pick, like, take something like Fix. So, you know, I had the fortune, the good fortune to become friends and work and colleague with a guy named Jim Lehman who is known as the godfather of Fix. Now, for those who don't know what Fix is, Fix is just a protocol. It's the messaging protocol that drives all of Wall Street. It's the standardization of messages. There's a fixed committee. And in a world of where it was crypto and it was tokenized, there probably would have been a token to be able to help and fund some development and some stuff. But it would never have been worth a huge amount of money relative to the market caps of the banks that used it, just never. So you have to ask yourself the question, why does a token have value? The token has to have value either because it's contributing from the network or because there's Some artificial scarcity that's imposed because the owners of the token have a motive to do it. You have to ask yourself that question. Those are the questions that a lot of cryptos, a lot of altcoins, never get asked. So if you don't see a wallet or a total addressable market that's big enough to justify your grand visions of the future future, that's probably because it doesn't exist. And so there is a lot of misvaluation now that said was that were there to be a way to incentivize development and build something, there could be some real value there. But I think there's a lot of people who have very incorrect expectations about what that total addressable market could be. So it really depends upon, you know, the, the actual token itself, how important the token itself is within the ecosystem. Or was it just a land grab or a money grab by the founders, where the money is going to be made by the company or the, or the distributed foundation, et cetera. So all of that is important here. These rules that are coming out from the SEC and CFTC will allow for trading and fundraising of new things and it will allow for development. The question of what will it ultimately be worth Will is, is. Is yet to be determined. But M and A in the space of companies that are at companies that are building, I think is going to increase significantly because that has really been rained in. Matt, is that a new hand or is that, is that the old one?
- [60:08]
H
No, that's another phantom hand. Dave, I don't know what's going on on the app.
- [60:11]
F
Sorry.
- [60:11]
A
Well, we know what goes on on this app, so that's why I always ask the question, the one thing I don't want to do. William, I see that looks like a new hand.
- [60:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, I was going to say. David, I agree with you about the relative value of market cap between infrastructure and apps. I won't get upset if tether at one point in time's value market cap is higher than Ethereum. Because we're comparing two different things. Ethereum is infrastructure. And if you look at the Internet, yeah, there is value at the infrastructure level, but the monetization really happens much higher in the stack at the application level, look at the companies like Google, Amazon and so on that were all built on top of the Internet and they are valued more than the Internet if you were to value the Internet. So in the long term, I would like to see more apps that are, that are valuable, that are big on, on any blockchain infrastructure that doesn't mean that the infrastructure value is not going to grow, it's going to grow commensurably with it. But if you go very, very much kind of long term, the apps, the app layer where the user touches something, whether the user is a institution or a consumer, that's where the monetization is going to happen eventually.
- [61:40]
A
Yeah, I think that's probably right. But you know, look it, it's the, the point here is that if you're building and you have product market fit, you can make money. If you have a token that is relevant as opposed to just kind of there to raise money, it's probably going to fail. And we've seen a lot of that and you know, it's, it's these things go through cycles. Anyone who expects that the current, you know, winter current morose nature of the market will stay. No, a new version will, will come in. I don't, I'm not smart enough to know where or when probably you know, based on a bull run in bitcoin when things happen. But bitcoin has its own very unique, you know, place in the market. And I, and I just, I know people get mad at me for saying that, but it's true. You know, no corporate sponsored token is ever going to become the global store of value. I'm not saying bitcoin will, but it certainly has a chance. But I know what won't. What won't is anything that is sponsored, that is built by individual, by people who you can identify and are profiting from it. That's just one of those things and it's just such an easy argument to make and yet it just gets so much emotion. I mean Jamie, you hear tons of emotion on this one. I'm sure you know where I'm coming from if you're behind the microphone there. But you know. Yeah, yeah.
- [63:07]
I
I mean we obviously, you know, spend hours in these spaces and people come up and on both sides it's a means trying to keep them, keep the sides from just being personal and respectful to each other on these topics as a full time job. So yeah, 100% they.
- [63:22]
A
So Brian, I saw your hand go up.
- [63:26]
D
Yeah, I was just gonna say that I fully agree. And you need to look at tokens individually. I think historically token value accrual was mostly absent for most coins. And I'd even go so far as to say like tokens are and especially in the past are kind of this nebulous concept that derive value from this hodgepodge. A different concept. Concepts like speculation, the potential to turn on the fee switch, some weak governance participation rights and things like that, which kind of are tantamount and turn into the token being worth what someone else will pay for it.
- [63:59]
A
They're memes. They're memes. I mean, look, look, let's face it, anybody who doesn't realize that the biggest single difference between tokens and equity in startups, the biggest difference was immediate liquidity. If you don't realize that, then you, frankly, I will never respect you. Because that's the bottom line. The bottom line is you can't sell equity immediately. It takes a long time and a lot of money to access the US market, the European market, et cetera. It is a big process to ipo. You know, Grant Cardone was on one of these spaces and he said it was double digit millions to go through just, just to start. So if you think about from a startup perspective, that's impossible. But a token you could launch for really cheap, relatively speaking, even if you're paying binance to, you know, IEO it or whatever. I mean, you're not, it wasn't a big deal. So tokens created immediate liquidity. Is that good or bad? Well, I mean, there are lots of good arguments to say that it's bad that you shouldn't be able to get immediate liquidity just on an idea. But then there's lots of good arguments to say, well, wait a minute, that allows you to democratize and not have to use VCs yet VC backed tokens were the material majority. So that kind of makes that argument go away. It's, it's an interesting question. The SEC understands this and they're kind of in the middle. They're like, well, maybe we should have a method for immediate liquidity for some of these things if there's easy public disclosures that are clear. And so it's a tough, this is, this is the tough nut to crack. People in crypto don't like to admit what I just said is true, but all the big coins have already, you know, are long past this. So then the question becomes, okay, so do we care about immediate liquidity or do we care about standardization? Do we care about being, you know, being able to invest on platforms? There's a lot of these things, A lot of these questions get, you know, get together. Right? You know, they are, they're all conflated and we're not going to unwrap it today. And we're basically up against time anyway. So, you know, from a last thought perspective, William, is that a real hand?
- [65:57]
B
No, no, that was an old one.
- [65:59]
A
Homer. I think I saw some. You know, I thought I saw something flash on your side. Any final.
- [66:03]
F
No, I got, I, I kind of, I got booted off the stage and reinvited, so I didn't really have much more to add. But I, I will echo your sentiment around. You know, when you think through the game theory of what happens to tokens is if they become too valuable, they become too expensive to use. They're all open source, so an innovator does a copy paste and, and companies move there to where there's the cheapest thing. So it's hard for a platform to, to capture value if it's, if it's commod, commoditized and copyable. And there is a network effect for some of these things, but as we've seen, it's not as strong as you might think. The applications that Tether moves to every blockchain and so it's on all of them. And Tether is really the killer app of non bitcoin blockchains right now.
- [66:55]
D
Yeah.
- [66:56]
F
And it may be moving on. It may be moving on there too. In which case all of this debate about what will and what won't be might get. You know, there's another. There's an additional risk onto all these other altcoins that they won't move on to bitcoin. There's a lot of bitcoiners resisting that move. So they're maybe the best friends of, of these other tokens. But it's, it's just, it's hard to think through a situation where a token actually ends up long term being able to really be valuable by providing a platform for running code.
- [67:32]
A
Well, I mean, I'm not so sure that I'm that negative, but I do think that the vast majority of them are constructs used to enrich founders and VCs. So, you know, it is what it is. Any final thoughts out there? I see two hands, don't know if they're real. I see Brian and I see William.
- [67:49]
D
Yeah, I was just going to add, I didn't mean to talk badly about all altcoins and my point was just you have to be discerning and so to address like layer 1 tokens for top chains specifically. I actually think you're kind of playing this platform thesis where if any DAPP gains mass adoption, the platform should do well and you have a lot of at bats. I also think like these network effects are really hard to replicate where you can generate this strong ecosystem of users, developers adapts We've seen so many alt L1s try and fail to really supplant Solana or Ethereum or a couple of the other big L1s. Also. Do you think you need that L1 token for gas? So as there is more activity, usage and development, the demand for that token will move up and that should push up its price. And then lastly, I'd say like we're so early on what this could become, but the TAM is just absolutely massive where at least for Solana, like is working to put all of finance on chain. And I do think like that could just be hundreds of trillions of value that could actually move on chain and there has to be some value associated with that and you can figure out other ways to capture that value in the future like a lot of other tech companies have done in the past. So I'll leave it there, but wanted to clarify my last thought.
- [69:07]
A
Yeah. And I look at it the same, same way. Right. You know, it's if, if you think that there could be that a token could capture half a percent of the total value of every, of all the assets. Yeah, maybe. And, but that's a lot bigger than most of the market caps of most of these tokens. So there is, there is some, but it's a limited, it's a zero sum game in a sense. I mean the total addressable market is for all of them, not just for one. But yeah, you know, I, I, I do look at it that way, William, one last time because I still see the hand in front of me because.
- [69:37]
B
No, no, this was an old one. But I just want to say a quick thing again. We should be making a difference between these tokens and we, like you said tether, but tether is a currency, so it is what it is. Bitcoin, Bitcoin is a currency more than it is a blockchain because you can't do much on that bitcoin blockchain except trade bitcoin itself. So bitcoin tether should be looked at and discussed as a currency. Then if you want to look at infrastructure, discuss Solana and Ethereum and Tempo as a infrastructure. It's two different ball games and we have to be a little bit more sophisticated and discuss things in the context that they are in, basically.
- [70:22]
A
Yeah, I think that that's right.
- [70:24]
F
Isn't crypto short for cryptocurrency?
- [70:27]
A
It should be. I always use the word crypto asset because I hate the, because I do think the currency is Bitcoin and stablecoins, but that's besides the point. That's just my personal mental model. But any case, we are up against time, so unless there's someone with something pressing to say, we will see you all again on Friday. I'm out of the office anyway tomorrow, so it doesn't really matter. So have a great day, stay safe out there and let's see if this, this kind of, you know, draggy folly market is going to have any interesting fireworks this afternoon. Just remember everyone, the knee jerk reaction to the first thing you see from the Fed is almost always wrong. Just remember that. That's my one piece of advice for the day. Take care everyone.
- [71:09]
H
Thanks Dave.