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- [00:01]
A
$7.5 trillion are currently sitting in money market funds, a all time high by far and rising. Many people are pointing to this humongous number as to where the catalyst is going to come from for bitcoin to make new all time highs and other assets to rise as well as we head inevitably back to a lower interest rate and ZIRP environment. We're going to talk about this and quite a few other things today on bitcoin. Bitcoin and with Iago and myself. Let's go, let's do.
- [00:45]
B
Let'S do.
- [00:47]
A
$7.5 trillion is a lot of money sitting in money markets. You can see it here it is right here. Staggering 7.5 trillion now sitting in money market funds. A new all time high. Those people sitting there just collecting that sweet yield from the government at the risk free rate, just loving life. What happens when that goes back to zero? Yavo? Every single one of those dollars is going directly into bitcoin. Correct. I read Twitter and that's what it said. 7.5 trillion coming directly into Bitcoin. It's going to 5 million tomorrow. Yes.
- [01:22]
B
Plus postage fees.
- [01:23]
A
Oh, right, right. I forgot you got to write down the expenses. I forgot about that. But I mean, I guess it does kind of lend to a point. This is not an immediate catalyst where I changed the title a few times here because it had numbers that bitcoin was going to go to because of 7.5 trillion. This is a long term conversation, but we do know that money is looking for yield and it's finding it there. And when that yield is gone, it's going to find its way somewhere else.
- [01:50]
B
Maybe show that graph again and let's see how, how much it dips when it dips or is it just up?
- [01:55]
A
Only it doesn't dip much. And I gotta see the time frame that we're looking at here. Let me bring that up once again.
- [02:03]
B
It was like a five year time frame.
- [02:06]
A
This is. No, this is back to the 90s. This is 1989 actually. It's a long chart and the dips are not huge. Look at that choppy. Look at that.
- [02:16]
B
In a way what we're looking at is just, you know how you have like a pool filter and it just gets full of leaves? Well, this is kind of like the pool filter for the leaves of Fiat. Just like as more and more money gets printed in the world, some of it just gets caught in the filter.
- [02:34]
A
Yeah, you know what, these drawdowns are not that big. Well, I guess here, you know, you're going from 4 trillion down to sub 3 trillion on a percentage basis, it's pretty big. But, yeah, as you look at history, now that you point it out, it's hard to imagine the 7.5 just, like drops zero.
- [02:49]
B
Don't believe everything you read on Twitter. But, you know, there is another aspect here, which is that. That no one's cleaning the filter. That's a, you know. Yeah, I like that.
- [03:01]
A
Pool filter. Steal that maybe. Well, there's a lot of predictions, obviously, as to what will happen by the end of the year for bitcoin. We got this guy. Crazy stuff needed for bitcoin to reach 250k this year. It is funny that just two months ago, we were still in the world of 200 to 250, 175. Now we're starting to see, I would say, much more measured predictions for the end of the year. Mike Novogratz, Galaxy founder and CEO, says Bitcoin can reach 120 or 125. We were there, like two weeks ago. I want to get your reaction. Listen, as I told you before, because they go wildly viral reaction videos, I downloaded three videos for us to watch. We can watch a little bit of Novogratch.
- [03:43]
B
Tell me what year we could be at $250,000 for this coin.
- [03:47]
C
Obviously, others, like Cathie Wood, have even, you know, more aggressive and optimistic views. Longer term out. But where are you right this moment? Yeah, listen, the end of the year is only two and a half months away, and so there would have to be a heck of a lot of, you know, crazy stuff to really get that kind of momentum. I do think, you know, we should hold 100, you know, 100 or somewhere close to that should be the downside. And on the upside, you know, you don't really accelerate until you take out 125. And so the most likely outlook is we're ranging between, you know, 100 and 120, 125. Unless we take out the top side. We could take out the top side if, you know, the President prematurely makes a move on the Fed, which, you know, they could. They could target that easily by the end of the year. And if this bill gets passed, I mean, those are the two kind of catalysts. I see.
- [04:42]
A
All right, so I mean, I also said probably 100 to 125 because it just seems like the most obvious thing. Right. Anything else? You're betting on an outlier.
- [04:52]
B
I mean, the easiest prediction to make is always nothing ever happens. Right. Whatever is the situation today is the situation tomorrow.
- [04:59]
C
Yeah.
- [05:01]
B
And you'll be right 90% of the time, but you'll never be interesting. The, the. So I don't know why Novogratz has decided to stop being interesting. I think it is extremely likely that we continue to be range bound.
- [05:18]
A
But.
- [05:21]
B
I think there's two interesting things. First of all, one, we've been anticipating, at least on this show, a gradual grind up for many months now. And we've been watching as the volatility of this asset has plummeted in an extraordinary way to, you know, historic lows. And that is a very interesting dynamic which we need to be paying attention to. Don't know how it plays out in the longer term. You know, one theory is it's a coiled spring, right? You, you keep. We. It keeps getting more and more potential energy. The other aspect here is looking at the behavior of bitcoin versus other, let's call them altcoins. Bitcoin was a relatively, had a relatively low correlation to them for most of the past year. But the correlation is now returning to historic norms. Now, I haven't done the maths on this, but just eyeballing, we're starting to see deeply correlated green days and red days across all of crypto, effectively dictated by bitcoin. And in a way, to me that feels like it could be signaling that an altcoin market actually is possible. So if we start to see significant gains in bitcoin, it may actually start to look like a more traditional cycle in terms of altcoins as well.
- [07:05]
A
Yeah, I was trying to bring up a, trying to find a bitcoin volatility index as you were talking about that, just to kind of put it in perspective, you can see, I mean, this is going back to 2011. Now there were times I have 15%. I don't know the exact metric calculation, but this is 24 and 25 are extremely flat. I mean, there is one on, there's this one.
- [07:27]
B
I mean, look at that. It's not just the volatility itself, it's the Volvo which has changed. Right. So the volatility is changing, so it's really becoming a much, much more normal or mature asset.
- [07:44]
A
Yeah, and that actually, as much to our dismay, makes a hell of a lot of sense if it's being traded by the same desks that are trading all the other assets.
- [07:52]
B
Right, Yeah.
- [07:54]
A
I mean, that's exactly how it should end up being. But listen, there's been huge questions of late also. This is a really important topic on who created Bitcoin and whether we should buy it. Or not. And I just find this clip that we're going to react to from Tucker Carlson. They're really interesting.
- [08:11]
D
They can explain.
- [08:14]
A
I blew it, though. Here.
- [08:16]
D
It's not as good as explained to me who Satoshi was the creator of bitcoin. This mysterious guy who apparently died, but nobody knows who he was. You know, I grew up in D.C. primarily in a government family, so CIA. That's my guess. Can't prove it. But, like, you're telling me to invest in something whose founder is, like, mysterious and has billions of dollars of unused bitcoin. Like, what is that? And no one can answer the question, including some of the biggest holders of bitcoin in the world. Do I know personally? They're like, oh, it doesn't matter. It matters to me, right?
- [08:49]
A
I'm friends with the biggest bitcoiners in the world, and let me tell you, I hate them because they're idiots. That's. I mean, that's kind of what he just said. I wanted to show you Jack Mahler's reaction first, then get yours said. If you think knowing who created bitcoin matters, you don't understand it. Bitcoin's open source. Nobody has special rights, and everyone can verify that. Doesn't matter who created bitcoin. Bitcoin is neutral technology, like math. Who invented math?
- [09:08]
B
Dr. Carlson? The Muslims?
- [09:13]
A
Oh, wait, yeah, but. Damn it.
- [09:20]
B
But, you know, I'm sure Tucker invests in gold. And its founder is also mysterious and possibly dead, which I think was Jesus.
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A
Right?
- [09:29]
B
I mean, God created gold.
- [09:31]
A
So Jesus, Jesus, he actually. He was known to wear gold chains with big Jesus pendants on them, like rappers. That's where they got that picture of himself.
- [09:42]
B
That's right. It was the Catholic Church.
- [09:44]
A
What do you think of this? Like, are we still doing these things?
- [09:46]
B
I. I think the best thing that can ever happen to you is that there's someone who has a lot of opinions on a whole bunch of things.
- [09:53]
A
Which maybe you don't know that well.
- [09:55]
B
And then they suddenly have an opinion on something that you do know very well. And that helps you sort of triangulate just how bad their opinions are. And then you can extrapolate, right? If their opinion on the thing that I know about is this bad, then maybe all of their opinions are this bad. And this is a very, very bad take on bitcoin.
- [10:16]
A
No, it's a bad take because he literally just threw it out there. Like, if it. If I don't know who it is, it must be the CIA, right? Like, if I can't explain it, it must be God, right? Same thing. If I don't know who it is, it has to be the CIA can't prove it, but let me just put that out there in a quote. Yeah, but why does it matter who created it? None of the, like you said, I mean we don't know who. There's no creator of gold, I guess.
- [10:40]
B
There'S no like primary, the primary means of, of, of, of private data transactions on the Internet is a system called Tor or the Onion network. You know who invented that? The US Navy. So just because the US invent something, the US Government invent something doesn't mean, I mean the US government invented the Internet.
- [11:04]
A
So good points. I mean, but why do, why, hey, why just throw the CIA out there? And why does it. I just like, isn't this the beauty of it though? Like, shouldn't somebody knock him on the head and say the whole point is that it can't be. Does he think that the CIA can still control it if they created it? I don't understand.
- [11:26]
B
You know who invented computers is the British government. And therefore the British government control all computers. That's the logic.
- [11:33]
A
Yes, that's right. That's obviously, obviously the case. Yeah.
- [11:36]
B
And you can see how well the British government is doing using their control of the global computer network.
- [11:43]
A
Yeah, they're doing exceptionally well. So I moving on from Tucker Carlson's horrible takes, I think it's just notable that people who maybe you would think might be on board or understand it can still have horrible takes and a complete misunderstanding. So we can silver lining that and say, wow, it's really still early.
- [12:01]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [12:03]
A
So in the meantime, in not fantasy world where actual people live and are not just making shit up, we have a bunch of senators sitting with the crypto industry on Capitol Hill talking about getting the Clarity act passed. They keep moving the goalpost. So it was right, this will be done by October, no doubt. Right. Of course the government shutdown is putting a hitch in all of this, but they're still saying that it's likely to happen by the end of the year. Brian Armstrong was there. Now Iago and Scott are going to react.
- [12:34]
E
Great meetings with the Democrats on the Senate and on the Republican side today. And the good news is that there is strong bipartisan support and will to get this market structure legislation done. It's important for America and the 50 million Americans who've used crypto want to see it get done. And so one date we heard floated was let's try to get this markup done. Before Thanksgiving. I think that there's no 90% of the issues are already aligned on and agreed and there's draft text going back and forth. A lot of great cross functional collaboration happening. That last 10% are the remaining issues and everyone committed to get in the room together and work it out and hopefully we'll see some draft text or get it out.
- [13:12]
A
I find the bald heads in crypto mesmerizing. First of all, I didn't hear anything he said. I was just basking in its splendor. But A, how much do we believe that they're going to actually get this done? And B, how much does it matter?
- [13:28]
B
Well, first of all, what we should do is probably look at the prediction markets and they'll tell us how likely it is to get done. I, it seems to me extremely likely. There seems to be bipartisan support, there seems to be a big push and it seems to be considered strategically important. How much does it matter? I think it matters quite a lot. I think it will have significant impact on crypto generally. Crypto launches and real world assets. And perhaps, you know, the piece of news that connects to this most directly is the same guy who was talking, Brian. His company Coinbase, just recently bought Echo and that's a ICO platform and they spent $350 million plus on it. It's a very, very big deal. I think basically the plan is to utilize this to turn Coinbase into effectively a competitor to NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange and provide a new way which bypasses the broken IPO system to bring companies to the market, basically take companies public, and that will be by tokenizing their shares. And what that means is a massive wave of real world assets of equities in the crypto space, tying crypto to real world financial activity in a way that has never really been done before. And that's, that's a sea change that is literally replacing the rails of the, you know, the core rails of the financial system with native crypto rails.
- [15:27]
A
I'm wondering. So that's not a big purchase for them, but it's a huge purchase for those who sold it, right? $375 million. It's something they could have replicated, but obviously they're getting the marketing of those names were behind it. But do you think that this is them deeply believing that we will actually get so much market clarity that in the United States you'll be able to just launch a platform that fires off new, you know, coin offerings? ICOs?
- [15:56]
B
Yes, actually, I think it's you know, they don't have to believe it's 100% certain, but they're preparing, they're planning themselves, they're. They're positioning themselves for that. Which means that they do think it is a likelihood and that they would be willing to take the risk and jump into that. That space.
- [16:14]
A
Yes, that's pretty wild because you have to imagine that if that is successful, traditional fundraising is completely out the window, right? I guess it depends if you're in the United States. If you launch token on Echo, are you then going to.
- [16:30]
B
Scott, we've lost you.
- [16:33]
A
I don't know why you came back. You can hear me?
- [16:37]
B
Yeah.
- [16:38]
A
Okay. All I was going to say is that you have to wonder if the accreditation laws would still apply, you know, if it would still be just the same kind of thing through a different vehicle, or if we literally get to the point where you can just start.
- [16:52]
B
One of the, One of the, one of the key components of the bill as it is currently being written is this definition of decentralized. And in the definition of decentralized, a key component is how is the ownership distributed?
- [17:10]
A
Right.
- [17:11]
B
So let's imagine a scenario that you wanted to bypass the current, you know, reg, A public sale, public securities regulations. One potential path, which I really haven't heard anyone else speak about, is you make sure that the distribution of your equity is such that there are, you know, founders don't have more than 20%. There's no holder with more than 10%. By the language of the bull, and we don't know what the final language will be yet, but by the potential language of the bull, that could count as a decentralized.
- [17:54]
A
System.
- [17:54]
B
Right. So the fact that your system is a car wash, Right. Admit you know, a franchise of car washes, but the shares are, are broadly distributed, could mean that you can define yourself as a dao and go public.
- [18:10]
A
The world is definitely about to change dramatically, there's no question. So the Clarity act really, really matters, in my opinion, because if it, A, because like, we could get a full reversal on all the progress crypto's made in the United States if we just have some regime change. But B, because if it has the Brian Armstrongs and Sergey's and all these guys in the room helping craft it, we know that they're going to do their best to make sure that all of these things that we do in crypto will be allowed in the United States. Yes, yes.
- [18:42]
B
And, and I think that, you know, it could be that a few years from now you see a major. You could Imagine anthropic or OpenAI saying to themselves, we've had so many secondary sales, we've given so much equity to our employees, we actually could consider ourselves a dao. And not only that, going through the IPO process, we need to find our investment bank with Goldman Sachs and millions of. All right, so we could just do this tomorrow. So it might be that some years from now, some of the biggest IPOs that are happening are not happening on NASDAQ. They're not happening as IPOs. They're happening as ICOs. That would be nuts. And it is not unimaginable.
- [19:30]
A
Yeah, I mean, if you. So I definitely understand why so many ICOs ended up being scams and launches. Because people basically raise the money to bootstrap theoretical vaporware with tokens that were overvalued with poor tokenomics, and they just never built anything and kept the money. Right. I mean, that was a very early iteration. Most IPOs, actual public offerings, are companies that already exist. They have revenue and they launch based on those metrics. Right. So is it.
- [20:03]
B
I mean, I'm not even sure that's true anymore.
- [20:08]
A
A lot of get the hype, but I'm saying you can't IPO unless you like our company with revenue, right? You got to go public.
- [20:14]
B
I mean, you could. Yes, revenue, but most of them would have revenue. But look at all of the specs, which represent very, very significant portion of the companies going public over the last few years. Many of them are not, you know, particularly well established. A lot of them don't have product market fit and so. And some of them don't have revenue.
- [20:37]
A
Yeah. I guess my question, what I'm getting at at the end of that, though, is that if you are a company say, yeah, I make money. I own a media company, right? Like, if I want to go public, would I go the Goldman Sachs route and spend millions of dollars? Or if this is completely legal, would I just issue either NFT shares or a token that actually represents a share in my business? And how would I do that? Right? I mean, doesn't that make sense?
- [21:02]
B
You're making me think, if the Clarity act launches, I should start a company. Here's. Here's my company idea. Give it to the Internet for free, right? Basically what you do is you go out, you find good companies which have revenue. You say to them, let's do a reggae listing.
- [21:20]
A
All right?
- [21:21]
B
Through your reggae listing, you. You manage to massively distribute ownership. And then people are going to pay a premium for your reggae because you tell them the Minute the reggae is done, we're doing an ico. And yeah, I don't know, I would need to delve deeper into the changes that occur and the new drafts that occur between now and when the Clarity act gets published. But something along those lines. There's no doubt in my mind that the Clarity act is going to be introducing certain kinds of new opportunities or loopholes, whatever you want to call them, or which are going to substantially change not just crypto, but tradfi. And the implication is huge here because up until now crypto has been this casino and the amount of real world activity. There are some profitable projects, but they are basically casinos. If you look at pump fun, if you look at hype, these are binance, these are casinos. And so the revenues that they're making are the gambling revenues that they're generating. They're not the only examples, but they're very prominent. But if you start seeing real world brick and mortar software companies, services companies placing their equity not in Delaware Corp. But in some kind of Dow structure potentially in the US Potentially not having the actual ownership issued, settled, transferred on chain onchain, becomes the place that actual, that that world's financial activity occurs. And, and it's there that I think the, the opportunity for the biggest chains, and most specifically Bitcoin, to act as a settlement mechanism that everyone can trust or for businesses which are expected to last decades into the future, is really, really going to change how people start investing and thinking about the value of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, in my view, is currently the only substrate, the only network which is actually appropriate for this because it's the only network that you know is going to be reliable 30 years from now, 50 years from now, even, or even exist in that time frame. And so this is big implications for crypto, it has big implications for bitcoin, it has big implications for Tread fight, and it has very, very big implications for the creation of a new, much freer, much more borderless financial world.
- [24:03]
A
If the Clarity act passed and platforms like this were completely legal, would you rethink the way that you launch? Positive.
- [24:11]
B
It's a bit late for that. No.
- [24:13]
A
Would you? I mean, this is a theoretical. Obviously you've launched it, I'm saying, but like, you know, you being a founder who has done this a number of times, would you be like, yes, I'm going to do this on public markets, let's go.
- [24:22]
B
Yes, 100. Yeah.
- [24:24]
A
I mean that answers the whole question, right? You, who believes deeply in decentralization either.
- [24:30]
B
Way, by the way, we're getting very, very close to a bus launch. We should have Scott a let's do maybe next week a special just on boss on bitcoin, on defi and institutional defi and where this world is going.
- [24:43]
A
Can we do it on Thursday? Like while we're here, you know, just do it. Is that cool?
- [24:47]
B
Yeah, we could. Let's do it.
- [24:48]
A
We'll be here. You know, it's like we're already scheduled 9am next week. Like nobody really wants to hear us talk about Brian Armstrong shiny head like so we might as well talk about something more productive. Do you want to see a crazy stat? By the way, I just got sent this. Stablecoins processed 46 trillion in transactions over the past year. Nearly three times Visa's volume and closing in on the ACH network that powers US spending.
- [25:13]
B
You know what's weird about this? I think this might be bullish for Visa. So, so think about it as, as stablecoins grow and more and more people get them and you know, we're starting to see stripe introducing stable coins and you know, banks introducing stable coins, they. There's going to be much, much more demand for online and real world payments to be managed. Now who's got the last mile integration to all of the merchants? It's Visa, it's MasterCard. And so while in the long term I think this completely eliminates MasterCard and Visa and the need for them in the short term and if they capture the market in the long term as well, they become the primary conduit between stable coins and merchant payments online and offline. And so there's potentially a huge opportunity here. Like both of those companies could potentially be very undervalued right now.
- [26:21]
A
Yeah, it's a really interesting take. Speaking of things that are probably not undervalued really quickly. Polymarket seeking funding and evaluation of up to 15 billion billion. You mentioned predictive markets earlier. Kalshi just raised at a 5 billion valuation and already has enough committed that they could take more money at a 10 billion valuation. Obviously Jupiter eyes full launch of its new prediction markets. Robinhood has prediction markets. Everyone's going prediction markets. This is the thing.
- [26:45]
B
Yeah, they're an extremely, I mean prediction markets are awesome. They're extremely, extremely useful. Not just in terms of being able to provide sort of a way to distill global information about what is likely to happen, but as a way for people to sort of get better at predicting. Right. There hasn't really been a market which rewarded the best predictors of non financial activity up until now. So in many ways, these are honesty machines for people who are, you know, making all kinds of claims about the future. Speaking of Tucker Carlson. So I think. I think as the Internet becomes more sloppy, more full of slop, more full of disinformation, prediction markets might prove to be one of the best tools that we have in sort of separating the truth from the.
- [27:49]
A
Yeah. Speaking of Tucker Carlson, I actually found evidence that Jesus created gold. And he's where? It's Jesus and he's wearing his own chain. And I even have a video of it. It's crazy. See?
- [28:00]
B
Well, there you go. I mean, seeing is believing.
- [28:04]
A
It's right there. But when you were like, Scott, you cut out earlier. It's because I was making a grok video of Jesus wearing a chain while you were talking. And for some reason it had sound and I think it triggered my sound off when its sound went on. If you're wondering what that awkward moment was, because I don't have ADHD at all.
- [28:21]
B
Yeah, that's amazing. Especially for a man. It's very impressive, Scott.
- [28:25]
A
I created. I created that. That's not real. Just so you guys know, you know, Jesus didn't actually wear a gold chain with Jesus on it. Iago, we're gonna do that next week. Just remind me adhd. I won't prepare all this stuff. We'll actually just talk about bos bitcoin defi and actually get this conversation done.
- [28:44]
B
All right, man.
- [28:45]
A
All right, guys, give Yago a follow and look forward to that next week. Have a good one, man. Thank you guys. See you back tomorrow for the Friday five. Later. What's up, wolf packs? Scott Melker here. And today's show is powered by Easy Bitcoin app. The app that rewards you for buying and holding Bitcoin. Set up a recurring buy and earn 1% extra in Bitcoin automatically. Then let that stack sit tight and start earning a 2% annual Bitcoin reward dropped into your wallet monthly after a three month recurring buy streak. On top of all that, earn up to 4.25% on dollars you keep in your USD interest account. You can even opt in to have the interest auto converted to Bitcoin. It's friction free. Set it and forget it. The best way to let you grow both your bitcoin and your bucks. Easy Bitcoin is live right now on iOS and Android. Hit pause, click the link below, download the app and start stacking sats the smart way. Your capital is at risk. Crypto markets are highly volatile. This content is informational and not financial advice.