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- [00:00]
A
You know, market's pretty much exactly where it was yesterday, at least as firms of bitcoin. Everything else is kind of meandering along. And the one thing that I notice which is kind of fascinating are, is really strange in a way. Posts from people. Max Kaiser and a bunch of others have posted about how you know something that we know. I mean, it's not like there's any surprise, right? You know, that we know that there was a rotation from, quote, individuals which were mostly the bitcoin whales that sold last year to governments funds and businesses. And he put out a post lamenting that that meant that bitcoin has lost its way. I would make the argument that that's literally exactly what has to happen for bitcoin to become what he always says it should become. And at the same time, we get Scotty Pippen, who's, you know, probably the best Robin in the history of basketball, to Michael Jordan's Batman, for those who don't get the joke, who is a bitcoiner who's been following it for years, posting a chart saying it looks like it's a pennant formation, which of course to technicians mean it's either going to break down or break up, but it's not going to stay where it currently is. And I think that's probably pretty accurate. And various people screaming about that. All of this at the same time as bitcoin has been trading between 67 and mid-66 to mid-68 thousands for the last six days after the fall. And so who knows what's going on? So anyway, with all of that, I noticed my good friend who has got himself into. Into a. Into a food fight on, on. On our show on Monday. And I'm sure you have opinions on this, Mike. I mean, what. What do you see happening? I'm sure I won't agree, but that's okay.
- [01:46]
B
Well, that's where we provide value. Dave, I look at you as a bigger brother. You helped me learn and, and, you know, temper some of my enthusiasm. But I think your bottom line is you're just pointing out a consolidated bear market. I enjoyed before when bitcoin was hovering right around 90. People called it a bull flag. I'm like, no, that's a bear flag. I'm sorry, but it's a flag.
- [02:07]
C
There you go.
- [02:08]
B
But it's going down.
- [02:10]
A
Yeah, it's a flag because. But it is important to understand this. The one thing I will correct you on is you and I know with, with absolute certainty and you will agree that in the S and P For example, increased volatility is highly correlated to down moves. In Bitcoin, it is not. In Bitcoin, increased volatility is correlated to moves. It's much more symmetrical, which is very different than other assets. And the reason I say, just to be clear, is because I think bitcoin trades like an option, and eventually it will be the same as every other asset. But now it isn't that. That's where the difference is. Anyway, Scott, you're here.
- [02:48]
D
I am here. Hello.
- [02:50]
A
So, anyway, Mike and I were just starting. So, Mike, sorry to cut you off.
- [02:53]
E
Well, you didn't cut me off.
- [02:54]
B
This is healthy banter. That's what I was doing with Larry the other day. He asked a question about what might stop, but I mentioned ETFs, and I didn't use the F word. My mother would probably spank me, and she still has the ability to do that. She's the wife of a U.S. marine. And so that's where this comes from. But let's just point out, that's how it's so important. But we need to point out what's happening in this space. Now, I see it on Ivy Chat in Bloomberg all the time, and I feel sorry for some of these people because what's happened, it's the number one lesson you learn on the trading desk, and that is to understand someone's personality, observe them when they're losing money. Now, we're seeing a lot of that in cryptos, and I'm sorry for that. There's not much I can do about that except point out my outright views. I see a bear market. I want to see proof of otherwise before we start, I look at it the year, it looks like it was a sell, an opening for the year, around 90,000, and it could be a buy on the close for the year. The bottom line for that is we just. You know, from one of my main base cases, I think stock market volatility is going to go up. I think bitcoin's leading the way. Prove me wrong. So so far, you know, 64 is a very good reason to cover shorts, maybe test longs. And I look at 74 now as a reason to kind of be looking to retest shorts. Prove me wrong. Close above that level. And I'm not just using it. Bitcoin. It just. It's. It's. The thing to remember is what Larry did the other day is very similar to what Michael Saylor did when he put the peak in last year. He tempted the market gods with extreme humor when he said he made fun of Warren Buffett for not investing in bitcoin after he made the 10X and MicroStrategy is down 70%. That's what I'm for. I felt what Larry did the other day. Those kind of moments mark extremes and peaks in personality. And obviously people are losing money. So bottom line is respect the bear, make it prove you wrong. And I'm not indiscriming the bitcoin. I see the same thing. And who's willing to say short copper above 6, willing to say buy key bonds around 5%, willing to say short silver above 100 and even potentially short crude oil above 65? I'm indiscriminate. For all those markets to go up that s and P500 has to stay above 7,000. Help us it reverts to 6,000. Stuff that used to happen.
- [05:06]
A
Okay, Nobody cares. Okay, I'm gonna that then, you know, as the teacher in the class, I'm gonna start picking on people. So Jeff, I see you up here. You haven't been here for, for a bit. I mean obviously you wrote, you know what has probably been the most cited article about what happened on February 5th. And we've done pretty much nothing since the market stabilized within a few days of that. You know, what are you looking at now in this market that's kind of like sitting in a two thousand dollar range for the last six days?
- [05:37]
C
Well, right now I'm certainly looking at the 13Fs because it's giving us some clues as to who the biggest holders and deltas would have emerged towards the end of 4Q. And on that point on the article that I had wrote up on what happened on February 5, one of the hypothesis that I made was that this was largely driven by a non crypto native asset manager that's likely involved in a multi strategy format where there is a whole boast of correlations that you're navigating for not just bitcoin risk but Bitcoin's risks to other multi assets. And maybe I was not surprised to see that the biggest holder of IBIT today, as of December 31st having added a whopping 14 million shares, is Millennium. Millennium now owns 2.5% of IBIT and it is the largest holder. And I mention it because I think some of the trading patterns we're seeing with Bitcoin is not driven by right now like directional risk taking. I do think it's a trader's market. I think it's being used for funding, I think it's being used for basis trading. I think it's being used for volatility arbitrage and a lot of other non directional RV centric arbitrage strategies. And the core of my thesis was that something broke on that correlation around RV trading because as we all can see, software had sold off massively and the correlation to that particular ETF IGV would have, anyone here would have seen is abnormally high. So I still think my best hypothesis is related to something in the tradfi world of risk mitigation rather than there being like a specific bitcoin centric blow up or insolvency or liquidation. Of course I think these things can compound into causation. But I don't know if it's like the, the catalyst per se. So that was interesting to see. You know what, what else am I monitoring? I really am monitoring the futures basis because I do think it is a popular trade where the Bitcoin ETFs are driven at large by that kind of fast money capital movers. And so what I would love to see is, is some IBIT or bitb or other bitcoin ETF creation units come into play without seeing like an expansion of that basis where one can then hope that it's more directional risk taking rather than being a pair trade. So that's something that I'm trying to watch a little more closely and recognize if there's any patterns to be had in some AM, nine, 30 moves and 4pm because that's generally where you see kind of these basis kind of narrow or implode as the trades are being put on pretty quickly. And the third thing is I think everyone here is watching as well is is the contour of the options market because it really is true that it is the most kind of capital efficient part of adding reflexivity to Bitcoin's tactical price changes at least day to day. So watching expiries especially onto kind of the monthlies where there are more rebalancing efforts from the tradfi world is, is, is, is something that I'm keenly watching. I think there just is a lot of sophisticated players. There are people that are doing calendar spreads that are taking advantage of term duration. They're finding ways to you know, own gamma, but also maybe structure it where they're not paying theta. And you can do that through calendar spreads and you know, you're seeing more of these complex activities come into shape. So you know, for now I don't see like a clear like breakout from organic like long term buying type behavior. But as we all know that could change really quickly based on sentiment too. So right now I still think it's a bit of a trader's market. That, that's my quick tldr take on it. Dave.
- [10:03]
D
I don't see any hands, do you?
- [10:04]
A
I don't. And you know, I always want to resist jumping in because I don't want to talk too much. But you know, I thought, well, I.
- [10:10]
D
Got, Mark's got his hand up. Now he knows how to bail us out. And now that Mark and I are in person buddies after last week, I know that he won't let me down.
- [10:17]
E
We are and, and glad, Scott. I'm, I'm glad you are still talking to me after I came in a little too heavy and became a space invader. Gave you that hug right off the bat.
- [10:26]
D
I'm a hugger. I'm a hugger. No, no, no, no stress there.
- [10:31]
E
Yeah. I think two things I want to talk about, I guess touch on what Mike was talking about on the technicals and bitcoin and all that and just how wildly varying over psychotic the markets are now. And then I want to touch on what Jeff was just talking about. The fact that when Warsh came out everyone went hog bearish because of the three videos where he seemed to be a monetarist and was just going to pull in, you know, all of the capital that the Fed has, you know, or has, has fled on the market. And then we realized, oh no he's not. He's going to be buying T bills just like Janet Yellen and, and everyone else before them. So I, I think we, you have to keep on the fundamentals. Nothing's changed. We're going to be printing and there's no one that can change the gravity of the debt and deficit spending we have in front of us. So especially when you look at the amount of competition for capital with Germany now a deficit spender for really the first time since, you know, a previous war. So that will continue to really draw a profligate G10 treasury dynamic and central banks. So that hasn't changed. That's how psychotic our market is. Now back to Jeff, what you were talking about instead of looking at the players which obviously hugely important because it informed what happened on February 5 in the days ahead, how were the exchanges supported? Did you think that the NASDAQ request to up to the million. I think it was a million option limit was to protect them in case there were client blow ups. Kind of like a Robinhood how they had an issue with the one day options back in 21 and their platform was under assault or at risk of equity insolvency, or was it not? Was that just part and parcel? NASDAQ trying to get more flow as a, from a competitive advantage by making that request to the sec. So was it systemic or was it just part and parcel to try and expand their share?
- [13:01]
C
Yeah, I love this question, thanks for asking. And I think I shared some notes on this as well that's available on my X feed. But, and, and I've been following the open interest change request since the very beginning and I think there's been some maybe confusion as well from other folks as to what, what was happening. Just, just to make sure you all understand the same story from a timeline perspective. There's always been an issue with Gensler having approved the ETF with an OI limit that was clearly way too small for the volume and market cap that these ETFs would become. So that was issue number one. And I made it very public even a year and a half ago that this number is clearly politicized just based on trading activities. It should at least be five times that. And they fixed it so over time it became 250,000 instead of 40 or whatever the starting point was. But, but I would argue, and the other problem is that the ETFs that got that permissioning was Ibit, BitB, Bitwise's, Bitcoin, ETF and grayscales, I believe. But the other ones didn't get that. So Vaneck and Cathie woods and all the other ones, they still had like a, like a problem with their OI limits. So there was one kind of action taken to at least streamline all of these based on the liquidity, so that the whole playing field is even so. So that's one. And then separately, IBIT alone made the request last year, I want to say it was around like November or December to bring that OI limit to a million. And when you get into a million, like that is basically a little bit more of like a custom grant rather than like the existing guidelines with a rubric that tells you like where the OI should be based on its trading pattern. So that is special and I think that is one worth watching. And it hasn't been granted. So that's the other thing. We have to be clear about it, it hasn't been granted yet. Now why would NASDAQ request it? I think there's a couple reasons. One, I think based on the trading volume that we're seeing on IBIT, 1 million is actually probably the right number relative to kind of the other peers that have gotten that permissioning. So it's probably the right and like equitable amount from a bottoms up fundamental like analysis of markets. And the second thing is I don't think there's been any like OI that reached levels right now where we would be breaking those things. But it's maybe more in preparation for a market that could come. And I think one market that could come really is, is within the growth of the structured product space. So if you think that wealth management channels are going to start distributing principally protected note strategies or some path dependent strategies like auto callables, where you're taking bitcoin risk but for yield in a slightly different payoff, that's a really, really, really big business. And the market makers do need to hedge those custom OTC contracts using what is most liquidly available and fungible to the underlying, which is ibit. So I think there is maybe some, you know, preparation for how big that structured products market can be that they want to get ahead of it so that they can price it and have market makers confident in their ability to be able to provision for that risk. Because these structured products notes, you know, this is where I started my credit, Morgan Stanley, we would like print hundreds of millions of dollars of single ticker notes on like a weekly schedule. And the way this generally works is it's always more lucrative when there is a lot of volatility because it's a, it's essentially a way to sell volatility into a construct of a yield through some structured payoff. And if you just think about what Bitcoin ETFs represent, it is the unlikely combination of being very volatile and like also doing that with a lot of liquidity. Because right now usually the problem with like very volatile stocks that exist in single stocks is generally it's because something's bad like it, it's generally because like there was fraud or something where the stock would gap and it's not as like evergreen the way the bitcoin business is, which is why I think it's actually a little special. And if I were betting man, I think a lot of banks would be positioning for a structured products business growth in that sector. So I think for that there's interest to increase the IBIT limits. But it would be unfair to say it was due to anything that was broken going into February 5th because I just don't see that level of risk that is on the books even with the current OIS to insinuate that. The other thing too, I've seen some folks talk about the chance of there being like a leveraged blow up type of situation. But, but, but to do that in a bitcoin vehicle, right, it's not going to come from like call selling because call selling one first of all it's generally collateralized with your own bitcoin and then if it's not too, the market went down. So you wouldn't actually have lost money, you would have made money on it. The only way you would actually have like a blow up problem is if you were like selling puts and the puts were becoming more in the money and you did not have the funding capacity to meet your obligations. So, so I think you kind of have to look at that leg of the trade and think about like what kind of, you know, trader or a fund would go out there and short a bunch of puts and you know, cause that negative gamma action to come into play. And if you think about that, that's kind of where the structure of products business is. For better or for worse, you're usually selling downside risk with some gap risk. So you know, maybe you don't think Apple's going to go down 30% so you're happy to be selling at the money put with a barrier of it going down 30% but when it happens it's, it's pretty cataclysmic.
- [19:28]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean look, there's two parts of the structured product business, right? You know, it doesn't matter whether it's selling puts or whether you're selling a principal protected note where you effectively, you know, do a zero coupon and use it to buy options to get the upside. But you're still protect on the downside because you have the zero coupon, right? I mean it doesn't matter how it happens. All of these things, as you know, and probably most of the people in the audience don't necessarily is that they're all related and so different people will use puts or use calls or use structures or hedge, do dynamic hedging or not to make it all very interconnected. You know, the only thing you said in that entire diatribe I disagree with is I think you're completely wrong on the point of selling calls. I think that there are a lot of people who have had yield strategies which are covered call strategies or protect or even the new, the new one that BlackRock is going to announce or has announced. I don't know if it started trading yet. And I think that a lot of the People who buy those ultimately expect that they're going to have the upside and if they get penetrated or get called away, that capital is to get redeployed. So I do think there's a fair amount of gamma that can happen in both directions, but it requires actually a move. I mean you're not going to get a gamma squeeze on the long side after a big move down because there's no reason for it. Right. All the calls are struck.
- [20:54]
C
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, I agree that you can have a gamma squeeze to the upside for the exact same patterns that could emerge. But the fact of the matter is that it's not call selling that would have resulted in a move like February 5th because ultimately.
- [21:09]
A
No, no, no, no. Yes, that, that, that, that, that, that.
- [21:12]
C
That'S more of what I meant. And that's why I do think like you can, you can if you squint hard enough. Imagine that the dealers in offering these structured products notes which have barriers that knock to the downside. Right. Because a lot of times like the way this thing works by the way for banks is like they'll say it's like a three year note, but there's like an auto callable feature where like if the, if the bitcoin goes up, the note gets called and you make like a small premium. But it's like a, it's not a multiple of money. You just made like a little bit of money for holding, holding note for like three months. And investors are like happy but not that happy because you know, they don't want to like redeploy capital. So what the banks will do is like, hey, let's roll it, like let's do another auto callable. And the banks love it because they collect like 6% on commission every time you do it. So like the, the math gets a little funky from like a net return perspective when notes retire so soon. But the problem is if the market goes down, that auto callable feature doesn't kick in and now you're stuck. And now you're stuck with this potential like downside risk as an investor. And so to hedge that, what the dealers would generally try to do is sell puts against it because that's kind of the closest vanilla option to replicate the payoff to match the risk. And so if you thought, if you thought there was enough like risk there in an illiquid market, which we know January was relatively illiquid for bitcoin, I think that's the other part, like there just wasn't enough liquidity historically in the ways we would have expected after December, that it's been a downward slope ever since, where it's plausible to think that kind of structured products hedging could have been like the catalyst to exacerbate the move to the downside.
- [23:01]
A
Right, okay. But we kind of know. Yeah, right. So that's part of it. Obviously. Steve, you have your hand up. Maybe you want to go in a different direction. How are you seeing things?
- [23:11]
F
Yeah, look, I mean, first of all, there's just, there's some things I've seen on Twitter actually want to call it, and a lot of people talking about how, how Bitcoin ETFs work and, and I just, I was actually just listening and I was like, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in and, and, and, and talk to you guys because I know a little bit about Bitcoin ETFs and crypto ETFs, but, you know, the, the way that a Bitcoin ETF works is, you know, you're, you're holding, you're holding Bitcoin in custody and you're not allowed to. I mean, that's, it's client assets. Right? I'm not allowed to rehypothecate that Bitcoin in any way. You know, every share equals one Bitcoin, you know, minus management fees over time. So there's nothing nefarious going on with, with, with Bitcoin ETFs from that perspective. I just wanted to clear that up. And if there were, it'd be a FTX situation. And, you know, these are, these are client assets. They're not yours. And you're not allowed to, to really touch them outside of the custody that they're sitting in. And, and if there's redemptions, you, you, you, you, you can redeem either in Bitcoin or in dollars now, which is, which is great that the SEC finally allowed in kind of distributions and creations. And then second of all, I mean, I love listening to Jeff because, I mean, I'm fully in agreement with everything I heard that buying and selling derivatives on an asset is going to happen whether people like it or not, whether an ETF exists or not. And it has. I mean, most of the people on this call remember Bitmex and where you could get 50x100x leverage on Bitcoin, which is pretty dangerous. I mean, 3x leverage is dangerous, which is why the SEC is not allowing 3x5x ETFs anymore, which is great, by the way. I used to be in a business where we had a bunch of 3x ETFs and talk about not sleeping at night. You know, especially an asset like Bitcoin that's, that's, that's a little bit more volatile. I think it's great.
- [25:27]
A
Well, I mean.
- [25:29]
F
Oh, go ahead.
- [25:30]
A
You go ahead.
- [25:31]
F
Yeah, I was just going to say one more thing. I mean I also launched a, a 2x2x Bitcoin ETF several years ago, which, you know, I mean it's, it's a, you know, it was fun, it was, it was fun to do but you know, there is no Bitcoin in that. It's just, it's just a, you know, purely a, a leverage futures play. It's, it's designed to be a trading product. And, and I, and I, and I'm. Here's my warning also out there that if you're a sitting in a 2x anything, you, these are products that are designed to get in and out of, in a single day and they aren't meant to be held for a long period of time, even, even more than a week. So it's, it's. I just want people to be warned of that because if you're sitting in a 2x3x levered product for, for more than a day, I mean, you're going to get slaughtered over time. So, you know, I could get more into that if you want. But, but I'm just, I'm just going to pause there because I kind of interjected myself here.
- [26:24]
A
No, the, those, those products are all, and in fact pretty much all of the futures backed ETFs and those are almost always futures backed, are not buy and hold products because you have roll risk and, and all sorts of other things that eat away. People don't generally understand that, but it works out. But yeah, they're all like. Important point that I was trying to drive at and why I wanted Jeff to talk about it is you. We had 1010 and there have been rumors of all sorts of, of things that might have happened under the surface at 10:10. But I think that the only thing that we know that happened is a lot of people got wrecked and, and it drove a lot of people out of the market and they left. And then we saw lots of, lots of selling and it, it, it lasted for a while. It crescendoed on February 5th. And now the question is, is there an FTX looming that we don't know about or not? If the answer is not, then we're done. If the answer Is yes, then we're not done. And the funny part is, is the vast seems to be overwhelming majority. And if just look at the today's news on, on X Ran Nunier, who used to be a co host of this show, questions Bitcoin's core promise after 12 years. I'm just reading from X and then, then you have Bitcoin analyst Willy Wu published his chart indicating strengthening bear market trend. And in the middle of that Is institutions boost BlackRock Bitcoin ETF stakes in, in the, in the filings that Jeff was talking about. So you literally have implosions from the entire crypto native community at the same time as institutions basically saying okay, don't worry, we'll take it from here. Which I think is funny. Mark, what do you think?
- [28:09]
F
Well, I was just going to say also like, I mean a lot of that isn't happening in the spot ETFs. It's, it's really happening, you know, via exchanges that offer, you know, a large amount of leverage. And you know, I mean I'm not going to say an intelligent investor because anything has risk once you start utilizing derivatives. But you know your, your basic basis trade is, is, is, is not that risky because you've got a lot of underlying collateral and, and very little, you know, call selling or future selling, whatever, whatever you're, you're, you're doing there. But when you're over leveraging yourself for that trade, that's when things blow up like 10, 10 and, and a lot of other situations. I mean, you know, we just launched a for instance, you know, a sweet ETF this morning. And you know, and it's like, you know, just kind of going through the process of okay, we, you know, we're taking in, we're taking yes, we tokens, we're putting it in custody. It's, it's sitting there. We're not, you know, we're not doing anything, you know, nefarious with that. And, and, and that's exactly the role of a fun admin is to make sure that you're not doing that, you know, and, and, and, and reporting that out. So. But yeah, no, that I think, I think, I think on a lot of the, the leverage exchanges is where you're getting some of the risk.
- [29:29]
A
Yeah. Mark, you have your hand up.
- [29:30]
E
Yeah. The part that I want to jump in on was what you were talking about, you know, Willy Woo, not you know, talking Jesus and calming us down, but going bear on Bitcoin. You know, it's, it's like the table was set and then all of a sudden someone pulled the tablecloth and everything's in the air and we're trying to find a grounding or smoking gun and a foundation. I think that the part that Jeff did talking about the derivatives in your piece, Jeff, and then I tried to also separately, this space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces today. Understand it and drive it is important, but it's not the only thing I think defining the growth. And that's why I want to know about that million option request. So thanks for that. That's a part and parcel. And yes, there will be. Wall street loves and will continue to do derivatives that will include all these things. But nothing has changed on the Bitcoin. You know, it is a zoom out, which I don't want to say, but nothing's changed on the, on the drivers that will take us through expertise. Yes, it might be some, you know, 58 might be the price that we have to look at and all that stuff and Wall street is building. But they've had these, these options out there before. I've had clients who own bitcoin, but they also are getting yield instruments from structured products at Morgan Stanley now. And they've been getting it for at least six months, if not longer. They've been available at least five months. So all these things are happening. The growth of IBIT's crazy, but the dynamics at the sovereign level is absolutely like what I called wartime finance. And I'm not talking about kinetic war, but the, if you, if you look at any other time, and I know that a lot of people have already understand this, but the refocus is it will continue. And I think we're all looking to make sense of it, but we don't know the price path. We have a very uncertain price path going forward for at least several months. And it's important to have these calls so that Steve can give his expertise, Jeff does his, and collectively it's all wonderful, but no one person knows it because we have tectonic plates shifting. Not to sound like, you know, another doomer from the Munich Security Conference, but this has happened well before. This has been going on, you know, since Liberation Day with Germany, with the debt break with France. So anyway, that, that's what I want to say. I like how you encapsulated it on a lot going on. And so therefore it just means people don't know what's going on in the next week or two.
- [32:30]
D
That's, I mean, don't we have global uncertainty in General at like all time highs. The chart's been going around, obviously, and if you look at 2025, it's even now. It's like I joked, it's kind of like used to look at the Doge chart and it looked like these big cycles and then Doge went parabolic in the Elon musk and all of a sudden all the previous price action from Doge doesn't even show up on the chart. Right. It's so heavily dwarfed. That's what global uncertainty looks like. 9, 11 and Covid, these used to be huge spikes, but 2025 is so crazy, especially now after Epstein and everything else going on, that you can't even see the other times when things were uncertain. And it's in these moments, obviously, that the same narratives that had no impact before become very loud. Like, to Dave's point now, Willy Woo's thread was actually really interesting. It dove very deeply into a very specific, you know, new brand of Fudd, which was Quantum. And you know, to his credit, whether you believe it or not, at least he did some math, right? And he dove into what it would mean if certain coins were released and all of that. The sentiment though, generally that Bitcoin, because price is down, has ceased to be what you thought it could become. That is bear market emotional nonsense.
- [33:43]
E
Absolutely. I, I think all these, a lot of these things existed. It's wallet specific, it's not chain. And I will posit that a lot of this is whataboutism, meaning it was there, but now, today, at this moment, is it time to uniquely bring this point up?
- [34:02]
D
Yeah, it's a circular conversation, but it goes back to narrative following price.
- [34:07]
F
Right.
- [34:08]
D
That people, humans just cannot deal with situations of uncertainty. They need an explanation for everything that's happening, specifically in markets, and they start to assign those narratives almost, you know, after the fact. Dave, I mean, you've talked about that so endlessly. I don't know if it's worth digging in, but we see it every single cycle. And so Quantum happens to be the new brand. But, you know, like a guy like Bruce, who's been here from the very beginning, has seen how many times a price has dropped, quote, unquote, because of China or because of the environmental impact of Bitcoin or because it's only for criminals and drug dealers and Silk Road, right. This is just a more evolved higher tech version of the same repeated, you know, prices beat down narrative, in my opinion.
- [34:59]
A
I mean, it's certainly what I think. And all, all I can say is that the Every single possible signal of peak fear. And I don't mean fear, but just disgust. I mean Rand dumping his portfolio. I mean, if you read, read what he says. I mean, I think he's more disgusted about altcoins than bitcoin, particularly.
- [35:19]
D
Did he actually say he dumped his portfolio, by the way? Because I thought it was just like a tweet that was like around kind of a hyperbolic YouTube headline, which probably is.
- [35:28]
A
I'm just saying that you got. But when you get Bit X quoting him as questioning bitcoin's core promise and you get, you know, Max Kaiser saying things that feel like, you know, it's just exasperation, you know what he's talking about. And it's like it's the same stuff, right? No matter how you want to slice it, it's the same, it's the same stuff. It always happens. And at the same time, I don't know how many, I've lost count, but dozens of analysts saying bitcoin will drop to this level will. There is a big difference. I mean Mike, Mike knows this and I know this and you know this. You'll never hear smart analysts saying this will happen. You'll see. The smart analyst will say it could happen and here's why. And there's this and that and various qualifiers if you read it. But there are so many people who claim to have absolutely perfect knowledge of where it's going to go. And by the way, you see exactly the same thing at Tops where people are saying, I am sure that bitcoin is on its way to all time highs. I'm sure you see the same thing. So this is not, I'm not. This happens at both, in both, both times. Right. You know, when it's topping is when everybody is sure it's going higher and it's bottoming, everyone is sure it's going lower. And we're seeing a lot of shirts going lower, Dave.
- [36:51]
E
I mean, absolutely. And because we're now all competing with Poly Market and, and other outlets that were given real time and, and you know, dopaminergic dynamics. So if you don't do that, it means you're on a big platform like Morgan Stanley or Goldman where unfortunately you still have a very large entrenched audience.
- [37:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly true. I mean, look, it's just, you see this stuff and, and it's in it because a couple months from now it'll be obvious. Now it doesn't seem as obvious, but we saw the same thing. I mean, I will never Forget, I mean literally never forget the twin 60,000 peaks in was that 22, 21. I don't remember anymore.
- [37:38]
F
21.
- [37:39]
A
The first time there were, it was literally three weeks of the funding rate on the perp market being, you know, anywhere from 50 to over 100 annually to be long. And then when it cracked it, you know, violently, you know, basically got cut in half, give or take, I mean a little bit less, but, but not by much. I mean quite violently. Then it recovered and it jammed up to 69,000 crazily enough in the summer and the same thing recreated, but at that time it lasted less than a week and then we all know what happened after that. And so, but, but at the time you're looking at it saying, oh my God, what the hell's going on? And you know, I got sucked in, I'm not going to lie. I learned my lesson and I leveraged. That was the last time I ever.
- [38:20]
B
Was leveraged.
- [38:23]
A
On bitcoin. Because you know, as Mark Yes Go was saying on Scott show this morning, you know, when it comes to trading for my own account, if I'm not sitting in a screen doing it professionally, I suck. It's one of those things you don't want to be a part time trader, you want to be a full time trader or you want to be, or you want to be an investor. It's one of neither. You know, it's, you don't, there's no middle ground there. Mike, you lifted your mic.
- [38:44]
B
I'm at the risk of interrupting. I'm very fairfold and Dave, I encourage you to interrupt me all the time. You'll be making better. So, so as we were speaking, the Trump brothers, Trump Jr. And Eric were on CNBC and there were some Ibs on the crypto chat in Bloomberg kind of making fun of them. That also is part of the juxtaposition. What's changed? I mean I love getting in Bitcoin because it kept me, it kept me away from all these silly New York millionaires that you know, that you're seeing now. This is a system, they are the system now. That's what shifted. Another thing as we mentioned, someone just mentioned ibit. So I just mentioned, just look back and if you look at since Ibits traded, the average is 48 right now, the 39. 39. So it's below that average. So anybody who's bought this is losing. But if you look at the mode, the mode is right where it is at 39. It's right at the most widely traded price which is December. So I just compared it to QQQ over the same time. It's 20% above its mean. And I just look at this as okay, so we, we jumped on the sell side, sold the ETFs like they're supposed to. I used to be on that say biggest pump in history. To me the signal is it's absolutely done. You have to look for something that has already happened. You look for give me the opium that we've had before. Remember before when Trump hated it, it was a great reason to love it. When Biden hated it was great reason to love it. When we look forward to ETFs is a great reason. Now there's nothing to look forward to that I see it maybe you can come up with something until we reset the whole space. So I look at it as anybody who's bought this space, it's realizing, yeah, it's a poor performance former, it's over. For it to recover, we need to see the beef. And that's my point out, at least maybe see it Bitcoin hang in there when the stock market drops 10% or it just, there's no signs of beep and I don't see it. And I think until something changes, you're just going to see the continued liquidation. And that's partly just looking at performance since in ETFs which some of us figured would mark the peak. So far they've marked the peak.
- [40:41]
A
Anybody else have different.
- [40:42]
D
Well, I was going to say it's not even just necessarily, I guess the ETF's marking a peak in this case. Steve McClurg, you and I have discussed this before but like anybody who's looked and I think Steve, we were talking about this in like 2017, but right when futures launched it was the dead top of the market for the day. We do have a long history of institutional products not necessarily being positive catalysts in the short term.
- [41:07]
F
No, that's exactly right. And the futures product really was the, I mean that was the top at that point in time. But if you remember four years before that the, the top was marked by CME futures product. Oh well, CME futures product. And then the futures ETF launched it, I mean mark the top four years later. But the reality is it's, you know, we're, we're in a four year cycle due to the way that bitcoin's mined and we're still in it. And, and, and, and even though these institutional products do oftentimes mark the top, it's usually exit liquidity excuse. It's like, okay, this, this, this Futures ETF launched in, in October 2021, you can blame me for that. But it, all it did was give, you know, the miners an excuse and some of the OG's excuse to say, okay, well now's the time to sell my Bitcoin because somebody's buying same thing. This last October there just wasn't a whole lot of liquidity in the market. I don't blame finance or anybody. There was no nefarious activity. It was just sellers were looking for news to sell and October was the top of the market regardless of what happened. And, and we're in a bear market and we'll probably be there for, you know, until the coming October.
- [42:38]
D
So for you it's the cycle, right? I mean we, we topped in October, we wait a year and all is well and all of this news is irrelevant.
- [42:48]
F
Well, it, but it's, it's four year cycle. This kind of correspond with what when I expect rates to start coming down because I mean, pal's going to be in office and you know, through the summer, it's going to take a while for Trump to get a confirmation on, on, on wash and then you've got to wait until the next Fed meeting before rates can start coming down again. I think everybody agrees that, you know, the, you know, rates probably should be around 3% and that means you're looking at September, September, October is when, you know, money printing starts happening in larger terms.
- [43:31]
B
Yeah, Jeff.
- [43:34]
C
Yeah. I just wanted to add, and we have to be a little bit careful, I think, in drawing false equivalents of the past to predict the future. And while I don't disagree with anything that Steven is saying as potential catalysts for Bitcoin to participate in a risk rally, I think we have to remember the Bitcoin movement at some level is driven by an energy that is, I would say, somewhat youthful. It's driven by both who are potentially fighting the monetary system as is, but really kind of as an alternative to it where young people can have like a chance to participate in wealth creation and there's like a significant change, I think in this cycle versus the past, which is in the past there was a little bit of this hyper financialization.
- [44:33]
A
Of.
- [44:35]
C
A world where there was just no growth to be had, reasonably speaking, outside of government spending. So it made sense that in that kind of productivity deflationary environment, if you will, that Bitcoin could be a store of value. But you have to think the optimists in me and the optimists of young people ultimately would prefer there being genuine productivity gains and growth. And I do think in 2026 plus, the possibilities of what is happening within the technological frontier with AI is not to be dismissed. I genuinely think it is one of the competing mindshares with Bitcoin, but in a different direction. Maybe with some more positivity though, I think there's also a lot of kind of chaos and negative energy that will come arise soon enough as these companies try to actually share more transparently their profit mission and their public mission. But all that aside, I worry actually that in a environment where like race.
- [45:45]
D
Sorry, my mic was up.
- [45:47]
C
Oh, sorry. No, I was gonna say to cut it short, like I worry a little bit that when we get rate cuts, the greatest beneficiary of that is going to be credit. And credit right now is going towards funding growth for AI productivity gains. And so if the excess capital that is going to seek growth is actually chasing those types of opportunities rather than, I don't know, a principal preservation mode to where we think that inflation is the problem, where you want to store value. I have like this unease that we can't just hope for rate cuts to be the thing to drive Bitcoin. I think there's actually at this point lots of other things that would benefit. Far more likely that will consume capital, including housing that won't necessarily trickle into Bitcoin as like the first of the waterfall.
- [46:58]
D
Did we lose Jeff? Sorry, yeah, that was.
- [47:00]
A
I think, I think, I think Jeff was finished. I, I just, I couldn't tell. Your spe. Your mic was going on off and on and off and on and off.
- [47:05]
D
Yeah, I, I'm having some tech. Shockingly, I'm having some technical issues.
- [47:11]
E
Yeah, I mean, can I jump in, Dave?
- [47:15]
F
Yeah, of course, please.
- [47:16]
E
Thanks. Back to the tectonic shifts changing. This is not like past cycles, especially on the global spend and the productivity investment or the investment may attract dollars away from Bitcoin. I would say yes, that will happen especially at the government level and in the US but globally, I still think the, the nature of Bitcoin being a common fungible global asset does differentiate it and it was set fit for purpose for what's going on. So to compliment you that, yeah, Jeff, you are right. I think that there are. There's been more competition for capital besides a store of value. There are proper investments to make. There's still too much uncertainty and there's a Balkanization where global shared asset like Bitcoin or common will be still maintained a pretty significant portion, especially given where it is versus other assets. So that's it.
- [48:33]
F
Okay.
- [48:34]
A
Anything else you want to talk about, Scott, this morning? Morning.
- [48:36]
D
No, I think, I think we're done. In my mind, I literally can't get this thing to work.
- [48:40]
A
Gary, what were you saying?
- [48:41]
G
Gary?
- [48:42]
H
Crypto's boring. Crypto, it is boring.
- [48:44]
F
It's over.
- [48:45]
H
Yeah, let's all wait till October. November, put your bids in at 42, 44. And I think we just take a break for seven, eight months.
- [48:55]
A
I mean it is certainly the dominant opinion. I mean I tend to think however, being putting in my contrarian hack. Just remember one thing. Every time people are certain that something will happen, it doesn't. Or very, very rarely. And every time people are convinced that something can't happen is when it's most likely to happen. You know this notion there are no catalysts. I mean, yeah, I mean all it takes is one decision from some large player and all of a sudden things change. I mean, I would say that, you know, sitting here in this literally two thousand dollar range, it makes almost anything possible. Now I, I am not, I don't have hugely strong opinions on this other than the more bored we all feel and seem, the worse it is. There's one other topic since this is crypto town hall, not bitcoin Town hall is one other topic that is. I'm curious if anybody cares about. I mean the fight on Monday was about Mike's making his famous comment that I, that is, that drives me nuts, which is that there's 21 million competitors to bitcoin. But I have seen more posts this week from people claiming that the altcoin markets has what, soured people on crypto and has dragged bitcoin down than I have ever seen before. And frankly, I'm sympathetic to that. I always have been. I've thought that there's a lot of shitcoins which have zero value, in fact that you know, that the only people got enriched were the founders and the early investors. And even if those coins have, you know, are representative of networks that do have value, that the token holders don't get it. You know, Bruce, I saw you, you see you, you saying something here. I, I don't know if I remember you saying this, but certainly quite a few people have said it. It's not like anything has changed. But the question is, is this the final descent of altcoins that have nothing behind them and that that is actually what's been killing the market, or do you think that this is just everyone's bored and they all go down together. And when people get excited, they'll all go up together.
- [50:55]
G
Well, there's some altcoins that have some value and there's some interesting things going on. There's some coins working on AI and stuff like that. But I think that generally the scamminess, I mean, it's interesting when we get outside our bubble. I was talking to somebody who's really prominent in the space and really, really successful, a couple hundred million net worth, very, very respected VC type who has been in crypto, you know, as long as I have. And this person was saying that they're just embarrassed to even mention bitcoin when they were at like in mainstream investment circles or among other, you know, wealthy people because it's just thought of as scammy. And I get a lot of people that, you know, I, I run my mouth on politics both.
- [51:43]
H
Bruce, you know why? Yeah, it has been scamming.
- [51:45]
G
Well, yeah, I mean you got, I mean the Trump, Trump, Trump coin and Melania and, and, and there is a lot of, I mean there was a lot of grifty projects going back 2016 and earlier, you know, and there's this, I saw this movie, one of these action movies with Jason Statham and the, one of the, one of the like, I don't know, villains or characters was this like ridiculous slob, overweight guy wearing all Gucci and a five million dollar watch and he's got like fake teeth and all this other stuff and he's a crypto guy, you know, and it's like they're making a caricature of, in the movies and you know, I'll run my mouth on, you know, national or even local politics and very often people be like, oh yeah, you're, you're the bitcoin guy, you know, that's it, like, that's the end of discussion. Like, oh, you therefore must be a scammer and you must be a low quality person because you're involved in, in this scammy asset class.
- [52:39]
A
You know, I mean, look, I've said it multiple times and when I first said it I got a lot of pushback. Now everyone seems to agree I said it that, you know, months ago that the Trump of Melania coins were, that, that wasn't the, the ringing the bell for the top of the market, but it damn well was close to it because it turned, it was the, the firepower gave the, the, the ammunition for the half the country that hates Trump to say, hey, let's sell it. And one of the big problems with the Epstein files is people are turning on Trump because he campaigned on releasing the data and there's all this, this redacted information and he hasn't said boo about it and keeps trying to distract people from it instead of confronting it head on, which might go down as one of the biggest political own goals in history if it continues. So, you know, it's. And, and so what does that do? Well, if you associate crypto and bitcoin with Trump and now three quarters of the country is pissed off at him, what is that going to do in terms of it and honestly politicizing an asset, this too shall pass. Right. If you're trying to buy bitcoin for what you think is going to happen over the next 20 years, well, Trump won't be in politics in two years or three years. So where is going to be the next set of direction and what's going to happen? And I think that that matters. But look, there's a lot of time that this could get crazy. This could get, you know, kind of smoothed out or create or fixed in a sense, but there's no doubt that that caused an issue. I mean, Gary, you're in those circles. I mean, you know, you know, you're one of those, those people I was just talking about. I don't know what you think about Trump, particularly as you haven't commented, but I know you're disgusted by the redactions and what's gone on and, and frankly, I think we all are. I don't know anybody who supports.
- [54:27]
H
I'm disgusted by everything I read in the newspaper. There isn't anything I've seen in the last two weeks that gives me any fucking hope. It's really depressing. And I do mean that because I do not think people invest. Like, there is no scenario that anyone even. What you just said, hey, I know when people are really bored. There's no fucking scenario where bitcoin is going to do shit here for the next seven months. And the audience needs to understand that they need to be extremely disciplined in their bids. This is my opinion, okay? This is my strategy. I am not going to chase bitcoin here. I'm going to let bitcoin get beat up. There are not any organic buyers. The adults in the room are so pissed off with the state of this industry. Like, I'm disgusted, man. Like, it really feels like Mickey Mouse. I invested a shitload of money in this space and I am really exhausted from the Hopium. And it's, it's. And, and, and there are too many people Communicating to large audiences. Their book, man. And it's not cool. Like, I don't think it's cool. I think a lot of people are, are, you know, talking their book. Nonetheless, I just don't see, like, exactly what you said. People are embarrassed to talk about it. Okay. And this industry's gone out of its way to alienate gold. The gold people, the silver people, the equities people, the bond people, Wall Street. And the truth is, guys, without Wall street, bitcoin is just going to sit here between 30 and 70, 80, 90. It doesn't. It needs outside money. And as much as you may hate the outside money, we need to start being nice to people if we want them investing in this space. And we need to clean our act up. I've learned more about bitcoin in the last four weeks, about some of the lies that continue to be pitched in this industry. The history. We're not the purest industry on the planet. And I think when you take the position of being Mr. Pure and you, you're not, it's a real problem. So I'll, I'll get off. I still love the asset. Okay. But I, I just think we're going through this junior high school to, to college kind of transition, and it's pretty painful.
- [57:03]
A
Yeah. I mean, I, I, I call it distribution. Is what's happened. What started, you know, I didn't start, but it really accelerated in July with, you know, OG selling. But now we have verbal distribution and we've always had it. We've had multiple purists in bitcoin saying stupid shit.
- [57:21]
H
I mean, it reminds me of the Nastar period, really. Right. And Nastar got crushed. They went to jail or whatever happened. And then some other people won from it. We're just going through this, really. We are, though, Dave. We're going through a very, a very different distribution. And it's really necessary, man.
- [57:41]
A
Yeah, but the, but the, but the rhetoric is, it is, is also going through the same sort of thing. I mean, you're right. You know, we, we talk about this all the time. And, and it's, it's already 11:18, so I don't want to go down another rabbit hole. David, you had your hand up, so. Yeah. Why don't you take us home?
- [57:58]
B
Yeah.
- [57:59]
H
Okay.
- [58:00]
I
I just wanted to. Two things. One, Jeff's comment about youthful energy going out of the market is spot on. I posted an article from Bloomberg in the feed that talks about kind of what are the broader consequences of the younger generation losing all this money, which arguably would be Their own seed capital to spill over into other sectors of the economy, like housing. I'll let you guys read the article. The other thing is, while we're all bemoaning how the winter is here, I thought this program's about making money. Where do we go short and at what levels? And what happens to strategy as this all falls apart?
- [58:39]
A
Well, that's. If you believe it falls apart.
- [58:41]
I
I mean, I think that Mike will tell us that. Mike? You think it's going to fall apart, don't you? Mike's gone.
- [58:48]
A
My criticism of. Of Sailor for the. From the beginning has been the way that he buys. I mean, he always manages to do. To buy the worst prices of the week.
- [58:58]
B
And.
- [58:58]
A
And, you know, even on the way down. I mean, it is. It is what it is, Smash. Buying the top is just, to me, a terrible strategy. But that's, I guess for someone who spent a large part of my adult life building trading algorithms, I know there's better ways to accumulate.
- [59:13]
I
All right, Mike. Michael Taylor does not know how to trade.
- [59:16]
F
You do, Clearly.
- [59:18]
A
Well, that. That's. That's clearly the. The first part is clearly true. True. You know, me, you know, whatever. I mean, I. I think I. I have some understanding. But the. The other thing that drives me nuts is when you become a caricature, you know, that's not good. And Sailor, to people who don't actually agree with him, and that's quite a few people, even in the bitcoin community, has become a caricature. You know, it's like Tom Lee has become a caricature. You know, not for any reason, the fault of his own, because he's. He's very consistent. But when you're saying the same thing, people, you know, the memes just kind of fly. Right? You know, bitcoin is going to 200,000 as it drops. And you say the same thing over and over and over again. People are like, I just don't want to hear it anymore. And so. And that'll change as soon as bitcoin starts going up, in which case, oh, my God, we forgot to listen to this guy. I mean, you know, it's. It's crazy, but the world doesn't have.
- [60:14]
I
The attention Spanish, and we're surrounded by broken clocks.
- [60:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, exactly, right? So my. My only thing I want to say before we close is yet Again, to the 3, 000 people who are on here, D.M. weisberger, which is the account. You can click on my little icon and follow me. You may think you're following me. But you're not if you're following at Dave Weisberger. Because today I got the sixth time that X told me that that they can't validate that I am me. So, I mean, take that with whatever.
- [60:43]
B
Great.
- [60:43]
D
Lucky number seven. Dude, it's coming.
- [60:46]
A
I'm gonna keep. I'll keep, you know, going through their process and they'll keep having a form letter come back to me, which obviously didn't get AI or human judgment involved, but that's X for you. I mean, I just, I. They got a lot of work to do on their support. So anyway, thank you for those who are clicking. I can see some of you are. So that's awesome. And on that, I guess we'll be back tomorrow at 10:15. Actually.
- [61:09]
G
Yeah.
- [61:10]
A
Yeah, tomorrow at 10:15. Why not? Why tomorrow?
- [61:15]
D
All right, guys, have a great one.