← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Well, good morning everyone. After glitches. Don't know how many people are here. Of course, I should always ask the question before I talk for too long. Can people hear me
- [00:11]
B
loud and clear?
- [00:12]
C
Yeah, we can hear you.
- [00:13]
A
Oh good. Okay, cool. Yeah, well, I'm also in a hotel out in Las Vegas and it's a bright sunny morning here at 7 o' clock in the morning. But you know, hey, you know, seems like a little bit sunnier for, you know, markets this morning. Although, you know, it's kind of hard to say why or what's going on other than basic stock markets being flat. Crypto catching a little bit gold and silver of a little bit crude oil down big because peace.
- [00:41]
B
Ish.
- [00:42]
A
I don't know, I've run out of thoughts on this one. All I can say is that, and I like the title, although I didn't name it, the notion that Bitcoin's going to plunge to new lows. I mean it could happen, obviously anything could happen, but it certainly feels like there's exhausted sellers out there. The only thing that's really interesting today is just how all pretty much every top crypto is more or less the same and correlated and trading the same way. So who knows, it could be a Monday bounce and tomorrow we'll see a bad Tuesday like we have last few weeks. We've seen a few of these but not a whole lot going on. So curious, what are you guys thinking about? I mean, David, looking at the macro side, you know, anything in particular? You're looking at these this morning other than the fact that it just seems to be more of the same and we're talking about the same thing every day.
- [01:40]
B
What we've got inflation numbers coming later this week. People talking about, I think Jamie Dimon came out earlier today and said that a tidal wave is coming for the US consumer. So I guess, you know, inflation's working its way through the pipeline. Read some other commentary over the weekend talking about how Kevin Warsh basically is going to let inflation run higher for longer and obviously try to help manage the US debt that way. All of which sets us up for, you know, good anti inflation hedges and you know, gold certainly seems to be picking up. One would hope that bitcoin would catch a bid off of all this as well.
- [02:21]
A
I mean we had our Monday show and we talked about a lot of, a lot of the macro side stuff. So it's boring for me to repeat it. But I think the most important point is if you're Kevin Warsh, what is the most likely thing you're going to do if you think that the Fed kind of got us into this mess, but we're in this mess. Well, what's the first thing you're going to do? You're going to stop talking and stop making predictions when the predictions are so damn bad. And so the fact that he didn't submit a.inthe.plot to me is completely on brand made perfect sense. And it's exactly what I would have done. And I think that markets are going to have to learn what is actually happening and you have to understand what their goals are. Right, David? I mean, their goal is to finance the deficit and to finance business investment. That's what they care about. I mean, you can say. And they want to do that without ruining the consumer. From a consumer inflation point of view.
- [03:20]
B
Yeah. I mean, arguably also from an inflation standpoint, you want to try and put a floor under housing prices. You also want to try to broaden out economic growth. If they were to raise interest rates, obviously that wouldn't do anything for housing, which arguably is the largest item on people's personal balance sheets.
- [03:40]
A
Yeah, housing is fascinating because, yes, what you just said is absolutely true. It is also the one asset that's turning on its head decades of policy, which has been to try to promote asset prices at the same time as suppressing consumer prices. And why do I say that? I say that because young people can't afford houses anymore because houses are one of the assets that they've managed to pump up over the last n number of decades. I was just reading a. I wouldn't call it a eulogy because he wasn't very complimentary of Alan Greenspan, but Alan Greenspan was, for those who don't know that he died today. And I don't want to speak too ill of him, but what I will say is that essay he wrote when he was 40, he was very much a sound money gold adherent and then proceeded through most of his career to effectively ignore his younger self. And it's a very interesting dynamic in terms of it because his writing was actually very coherent and very cogent, but his actions were very, very fiat oriented. Blow bubbles, blow debt, et ceter. You know, interesting.
- [04:54]
B
I mean, Dave, you got to honor Allen. He's the man who made us all irrationally exuberant. We got to love that.
- [05:00]
A
Well, but that was just, that was a shade of the look, I was trading at the time. So, you know, I was on, on a trading desk, you know, the same guy who said irrational exuberance that was real Alan Greenspan. He let himself shine through and then regretted it and went back to blowing bubbles immediately after it. I mean, you know, etc. Anyway, Ryan, I guess we're back to waving at me to get you to get my att.
- [05:25]
C
X is killing me, man. It was so buggy this morning, I couldn't get anything to load. And then, well, we crashed twice.
- [05:33]
A
So, you know. Yeah, there you go.
- [05:35]
C
You know, it must have been that server that Elon unplugged last year or the year before.
- [05:40]
A
Who knows?
- [05:42]
C
A couple things I'm watching this Morning. One is SpaceX taking a great turn here, strc. Seems like a great bargain watching that. I'm curious what's going to happen with that. Love your thoughts on that. And then also, it was a couple years ago, someone had dropped a bunch of Venezuelan paper money at the Bitcoin Miami conference. They just threw it in front of a fan because it was basically worthless and it was just blowing all over the place. I remember grabbing some out of the air and I just. I was cleaning out my desk this morning and I found it. I'm wondering if it's going to be worth something again one of these days.
- [06:17]
A
Well, isn't it new money when they do that? But yeah, I remember that as I, you know, I live in Miami, we're sponsoring that conference. You know, I mean, look, it's funny you mentioned that because I mentioned this morning how the most underreported economic news of, I think, in my life is how unbelievably successful compared to expectations Milei's been by deregulating in Argentina and getting government the f out of. Out of the economy. And the mainstream media doesn't want to cover it because all the mainstream economists said that he would fail and it would cause all these disasters. And I think that's fascinating at a time when you're seeing the hypocrisy of Ro Khanna and Bernie and all these other idiots talking about, well, we should take wealth away from people, even if it's in stock. This whole Elon thing when he was worth a trillion, I don't know, it's just nuts. But SpaceX, to me, I hate obvious trades because they tend to be hardest to play. But the notion that SpaceX would stumble after the hype kind of ended and people are facing lockups ending and more supply coming on the market seems pretty obvious. The real question with SpaceX is where does it find its level and what happens after that? And how much of the vision will actually materialize because it could still be an incredible bargain if in fact the vision materializes. But it is literally that. And so I guess we'll see. STRC is a totally different situation. I mean STRC to me is the most probably the source of the worst takes on this platform, both good and bad. And I don't understand why people think of it as anything other than what it is, which is it's a high yield instrument that the credit is based upon an asset, AKA Bitcoin as opposed to on the future cash flows of a company that has struggling business. Because businesses that aren't struggling don't need to raise high yield credit. I mean, I don't get it. Right. You know, to me it's not, it is what it is. I mean the benefit to this is that the market effectively took away the punch bowl. If you stayed at 100, you know, at par, then more, every, every week that happened, more money would be bought. Buy strategy into bitcoin, I mean in serious size. I mean they bought a little bit last week, but it's small. But that increases concentration risk and increases doomer risk. And so every time people see things like this, they ignore the fact that capitalism and free markets are a self correcting process. So if you're worried about extrapolating strategy, owning 10% of all Bitcoin, well don't be so worried anymore. Right. Because the market itself said this probably isn't so cool. That said bitcoin goes to 120, strc will be trading at par and they'll be doing more because the credit will be that much better. Jamie.
- [09:29]
D
Hey Dave.
- [09:30]
A
Yeah.
- [09:31]
D
Obviously this is all over Access. It was the big talk of all last week, right. And on top of the 32 bitcoin that they sold. But for people that were in the STRC instrument anyways, like the, the lower it went, I was surprised not to see more people piling in. I mean it just, it, it raises the effective rate, you know, and, and it bounced right back. They went like the 82 to 88. So it has come this kind of like the lower it goes, kind of like the demand increases because you're, you're getting a better value for it. You know the strategy situation is interesting. Like I, I talked about it in one of the spaces, you know, I really think they need to normalize sell coin so that people take that out of the equation where like it's oh, if they're in a, they're going to have to sell because they're in trouble. Well, you know, you saw what the market did. So let's, let's normalize it and make that a more of a consistent selling net benefit for, for strategy. And they realize well they can sell it when they're doing well also. I mean and then the last thing I'd say is that people are looking for is this, that the four year cycle October target, you know, because if that's real and if strategy can get to the bull market, I don't see strategy failing in a bull market. So then everything gets to turn over. I'm curious what you think about those kind of talking points.
- [11:00]
A
Well, I mean strategy didn't fail in 2022. I mean we are so far from it. It's, that's the thing is, is that there's no structural pressure right now. But if you're buying a high yield product then people tend to be reassured by it trading at par. And so you get this sort of self referential, I don't call it a doom loop because it doesn't go down to the bottom. But there was a reason and it was wrong that he did it. There was a reason why Saylor kept pushing the narrative of it's trading apart is the best Sharpe ratio, trading apart is the best Sharpe ratio. And he kept saying and it was true until it wasn't. And the reason is because when it's there he can sell more and raise more and buy more bitcoin and enhance his bitcoin yield. So it was self interested. But the truth is once it's below par, he's not selling anymore. And it doesn't really matter because if you're buying it. Think of it this way Jamie. If you have a bet and your bet is I think bitcoin is going to 10x in the next 10 years, why do you buy something to make a 10% yield with an extra 10% yield pickup. You buy Bitcoin, you don't do it that way. If on the other hand you're a fixed income investor and you need a yield and you don't need to touch your principal for five years, then STRC makes an enormous amount of sense. But if you are using it like a lot of people said they were as a bank account where you can go in and go out, well now it's not going to be so good anymore. Now you don't know because it's high yield, high yield could drop to 70 or 80. Do you really want to take that risk? And so that's sort of the dynamic you have going on. It's a people ignore that it's different types of investors. Personally, it makes sense.
- [12:52]
C
Sorry.
- [12:52]
D
No, I agree. I think. No, I was going to say the, those last three. Like the way you unpacked it is, is because the people on here like it's a money market, it's a bitcoin stable coin. You know, it's not, it's not. And you don't want bitcoin. If you need income and income, they're just two different things. If you have income and you want to consider a different type of income source then that, then that aligns. But you know, you're right. I mean the choice between bitcoin and something that provides income are two different, you know, reasons to own it.
- [13:27]
A
I mean yes, it's a, it's a totally different reason to own it. But this hyperbolic stuff, I mean look, I personally think that anybody who has post on X that strategy is going to be forced to dump or liquidate or get margin called or whatever and go into this kind of doom loop at these prices. Anything close to these prices should be an immediate unfollow. Right? It's just the problem is I hate giving them oxygen, right by reposting it or arguing with it because that's what they want. They're just engagement farming. The problem is there are people who read this shit and believe it. It's just stupid. I mean most of the takes on this stuff have been stupid. Now one of the takes that is not stupid is all this. The questions about tribalism. I mean Saylor coming out with a thing about, well there's four types of bitcoiners. I mean I personally was insulted by that. I mean I thought that that was fucking stupid. People don't have to be put in boxes. I mean only really weak minded people have to be put in boxes. There's lots of different ways that you can look at a portfolio. The same human being could have a section, can have a trading account and have a long term hold account and have a cash account, fine. But all of this is to say that look, some of the rhetoric in the bitcoin world I've found disturbing and you know this Jamie, you've heard me say it before. But the major point of digital scarcity, of a programmatic open source knowledge of a scarce asset that can't be inflated away, that can be used globally, that is a very powerful one. And I don't understand why people have to go off on these almost religious kind of debates about it, but there we are. Gary Cardone talks about this a bit more eloquently than I am. But I think that's a large part of it. And so do we really care? Does it really matter?
- [15:26]
D
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, it's funny because I've been criticized as being, as not being a bitcoiner, you know, because I believe in diversification and a portfolio. But I spent a lot of the last two weeks defending bitcoin a lot louder than I have in the past because people have lost their minds. It's like, you know, until the, the bitcoin network itself has shown me that it's not operating at, you know, at full strength, then, then, yeah, let's have that discussion. But that I've seen no evidence of that at all. And I've been trying to remind people like, hey guys, calm down. You know, this is crazy right now.
- [16:03]
A
Well, I mean, yeah, yeah, look, I, I, you know, you've heard me, I jump in. Look, I, I generally don't go on bitcoin today anymore because they have a, a racist pig who, who they invite up constantly, and I can't stand them. And so I'm just not going to deal with that. You know, it's, but the fact is, is, I guess, you know, you can be as bad a human being as you possibly can be. But if you tote the gospel, you can say it now, you know, Lawrence and Terence are good people. I'm not saying them, but, you know, it's just, it's, it's difficult. Right. You know, you get into these sort of religiousy sort of things. Ryan.
- [16:43]
C
Yeah, I, you know, I think human nature is that we will gladly, in masses, follow a passionate idiot over a quiet, wise person. And that just is so true in the crypto space is the, the hype and the passion. And when the price is rallying and we're in the bull market and you have Saylor out there and you know, all the other talking heads out there, like just beating this drum, it does become a frenzy. But, you know, then the people that are, you know, watching the numbers and playing the market correctly, they're just cashing in on it each time. So we go through the same passionate hype over and over and over. So it does become like this religious fervor where the believers are left holding the bag each time, every four years. Everyone knows, everyone knows the cycle, everyone sees it on the charts, and yet everyone still holds all the way through.
- [17:41]
A
Yeah.
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C
Even when there's that like 120, 126, it's, you know, HODL. Why so someone else can cash in on you.
- [17:47]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's some truth to that. Hell, I've been guilty of it. I mean, I haven't. I was holding at 16, I was holding it at 120. I mean, you know, whatever it is what it is. But look, my criticisms are of Saylor. Much more about his. Just, you know, when he gets some of what he says. His core thesis though is something that hasn't changed and people always say it, which is I believe the asset is going to be worth a lot more in dollar terms because it has to be. And I think it's going to gain critical, massive adoption, more or less. That's what he's saying. The difference between a lot of the criticisms are whether it could be inside or outside of the financial system. Now, I'll be very honest, I think people who think that Bitcoin is going to replace the dollar anytime soon, short of some post apocalyptic scenario, are smoking something. Right. You know, it's like these things don't happen so easily. You need to build the Trojan horse. You need to get people to believe in it and understand it and access it. And that pretty much has to be inside the system. And that's the sort of thing that Saylor said and I agree with him 100% on that. And somehow that's considered a bad thing. So I don't get it, but so be it. Ryan, we've talked about this. I mean there's a lot of. But the thing is that we talk about Bitcoin way too often. I just think that the STRC saga, okay, it's at 90 or wherever it is this instant, so it's at a 10% discount. That has nothing to do with Bitcoin's credit worthiness as an asset going forward into the future. Will it add value? I mean it has some, but it's not. But that's really the bet. So many people think that strategy is going to be forced to sell and I just don't see how or why they would be.
- [19:39]
C
I think it's just psychological indicators people are looking for. Right. Like none of it really makes sense on the day to day when you have a really short time horizon. You see bitcoin drop from 65 to 60 and everyone all of a sudden sells Coinbase stock. It didn't really actually affect Coinbase's revenue at all. Actually. It was probably good for Coinbase's revenue because they collect on the exchange side. I think it's just the psychology of it where when Bitcoin was really low. 2022. And you know, around that time, I think it was maybe, yeah, 2022, like Coinbase was around $27 a share. And Coinbase still had great profits. Coinbase was still doing great. But it was just the sentiment and the psychology of it. I think the same thing is tied with STRC where people are looking at this, this instrument thinking, oh no, like Bitcoin's down, therefore this 10% yield that he's promising us, I'm looking at it as well, he's gonna save face eventually and try to push the price back to 100, because he's said that over and over and over again. And you know, are we gonna be surprised when someone actually does what they say they're gonna do or I don't know. So for me, it's like I'm just waiting for the 10% increase on it.
- [20:54]
A
Well, here's, here's, here's the deal. This, the thing is very simple. The doomers that have been out and talking about it are comparing STRC to UST and Terra Lytle, except that in the case of ust, there was an infinite doom loop which caused minting and burning, you know, minting of Terra Luna to infinity. And so it collapsed. There's no such mechanism with strc. That's the first thing. The second thing is, and this is the important one is what Jamie was saying. Are there sufficient funds out there, like of real size that are underlying real, you know, customer deposits where there would be for selling that have treated STRC like a dollar stablecoin, where it going to a big discount will cause financial distress. And for selling of crypto assets. And if the answer to that is no, then this is a complete, complete nothing burger.
- [21:50]
E
And this space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces.
- [21:55]
A
Today is a great buying opportunity. If the answer to that is yes, then there's an issue potentially even if there is no doom loop. Now I saw someone this morning was comparing it to GBTC grayscale the trust, which is another absolutely absurd scenario because in a closed end fund there is literally nothing that could be done. It went to a 50% discount and stayed there. People bought it when it was at 25 and they lost piles of money. And then those same people did so on leverage. You had firms like Genesis Holding, GBTC on their balance sheet at full collateral value as if it didn't trade at a discount, even though it liquidly was marked to market, right? So you had all sorts of crap. There's none of that with STRC either. So I don't really understand the narratives and where people get to it, but I think that the dumb people who followed sold last week, and that's why you're seeing the price action you're seeing today. Yeah, Jamie.
- [22:54]
D
Yeah. Also. Also the fraud. I mean, like, the. You know, Kwan actually went to jail for frauds. Like, this is like. That's the big elephant in the room, too. It's like, don't forget about that part. I mean, there's a. There was a. There was a big grain of salt space last week, and. And they went deep into it. Josh Mandel was there, Josie. They were all talking about the. The. Like, some of the marketing side of it, and. And whether or not that. But I'm like, you can have the discussion, but the. The Terra Luna was clear fraud. With Do Kwon. It was
- [23:28]
A
yes and no. I mean, the bigger fraud was Mashinsky and in my opinion, Erlich and obviously Sam. Right. But, you know, look, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. All I'm trying to say is the mechanics of trading and the fourth selling waves that we experienced at the bottom of the last cycle. I.
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B
It's.
- [23:48]
A
It's hard to see where that replicates, you know, rhyming a tiny little bit. And I think we've sort of already seen it. That's kind of the point anyway.
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E
Adam.
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A
Yeah, you got me.
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B
Okay.
- [23:57]
F
Mine was glitching heavy this morning.
- [23:59]
A
Yeah, we're hearing you. Yeah, I'm hearing you now.
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B
Yeah.
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F
The. You know, it's funny, I. I don't pretend to know what sailor's gone over got going on over there. I. I don't dig in. Certainly smart people I follow, you know, think. Seem to think it's okay, but. But that doesn't mean it is or isn't. I think the general vibes you get when you get this kind of push back on the timeline is just, you know, the financial engineering aspect of it. For people like me who. Who don't know what's actually happening, but just don't like the financial engineering aspect of it and think that things that are financially kind of rigged like, that just eventually fail, which may or may not be true. I don't necessarily think it's true, but just to give, like, the kind of normie perspective on why people think, you know, it's gonna fail. Now, I'm not saying it will or won't. I have no. I literally have no idea. I certainly know plenty of smart people, though, who don't believe that you know, people like Ryan and stuff who, who tend to under understand these things way, way better than I do. You know, I think it's just the general consensus in crypto is just you get these financial engineering schemes tend to tend to die for whatever reason. That's not to say this is indifferent. I think this is actually probably different to a degree because it's much more kind of Wall street, kind of foundationally built more on Wall street than just natively crypto. But I don't know that that's just kind of the norm you feel. It's just you get these financial engineering schemes tend to blow up.
- [25:35]
A
Well, the problem is that, look, you're onto something and it's very important in that people, look, a lot of people invest without really understanding what the hell they're doing, bro.
- [25:45]
F
Everybody, almost everybody does, let's be honest, man.
- [25:48]
A
And you know, so you buy something and marketing matters. If you bought STRC to use as a checking account knowing you were going to have to go in and out, in and out, first of all, I don't even think you get the tax benefits if you do that. But that's neither here nor there. I'm not a tax attorney and I don't own any strc. But misunderstanding what it is is different. I mean, there's no way you could explain to me that the model that thinking of it as anything other than high yield debt, perpetually preferred debt, but still high yield debt. If that's not your mental model, then I don't understand how the hell you're in. Is a perfectly rational thing for someone to say. I'm a high yield investor, runs a high yield fund, says, okay, I'm buying this thing because I think that the credit worthiness of the parent company, which is based on an asset called Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is going to be up and to the right over the next 20 years. I'm much more secure with this credit, you know, with getting this interest here than in a company where if they don't execute well on their business plan or this happens or that happens, it goes under. I mean, I can see that that's a perfectly rational point of view, but it is still, you have to look at it in the same way. You have to look at it through the lens of default risk. It's the only way you can look at it. But yet so many people did it and said, oh well, it can't default. Well, it's like, no, of course not. You would be paying 6% if there was no default risk, not 13 or whatever it is right now. And that's not financial engineering, that's just facts. And people don't want to think about it that way, but it is. That's the only way to think about it. At least I think so. I mean, David, I mean you're in these markets, I mean, have you taken questions from people about this? Do they look at any other way differently?
- [27:46]
B
No, they haven't.
- [27:49]
A
Okay, so other than that, other than that, the other thing that you know, Scott, are you actually there? By the way, I saw you lift your mic for a heartbeat. I can't tell if you're actually in and out.
- [28:10]
F
I think we're getting full rug. Jamie's got an infinite hand for me as well. You know, it's glitched.
- [28:15]
A
Yeah, I guess Scott just fell down the listener. I was gonna say the other thing we were talking about, you know, this morning is, you know, what's going on with the dollar and the dollar so called dollar milkshake theory and works now. Oh, there you go. I mean, yeah, there was, there's a bunch of other crypto related news items out there. I mean I saw some stuff about the Ethereum foundation and this stuff doesn't seem to be impacting markets at all. Is there anything else that you see that we should be talking about?
- [28:43]
F
Did you see the poly
- [28:46]
E
that they were paying influencers for clipping to effectively woo us Customers were not allowed to be there. Yeah, at least that, that was the allegation.
- [28:57]
A
Right.
- [28:58]
E
I didn't dig too deeply into it but you know, major platform doing marketing doesn't really surprise me.
- [29:06]
F
Yeah, I mean my view on it is, Paul, if you're on X at all or on Tick Tock at all, you know, these guys actually, actually Kalshi I think has been going way, way harder than, than Poly Market. But yeah, they're all doing this kind of. They're on paid shills, unpaid ads, you know, I mean you just look at it, it's all kind of fake now, but yeah, it's, it's not surprising that Polymarket got exposed. I guess it's a little, the controversy is more around who did the exposing. Was this kind of like, you know, or.
- [29:40]
A
Yeah.
- [29:40]
E
Or what the intention was.
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F
Right.
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E
Because targeting Americans, I mean, that's depending on how you view it. That's why CD went to jail.
- [29:48]
A
Yeah. I was going to say we've seen that story before
- [29:53]
E
and it's not like the FBI didn't once raid Shane Copley Polymarket's head apartment. Right. So it's not like they're not on the radar.
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A
Does that matter? The other story that I thought was interesting, I haven't seen anyone report any comments about it. I don't know what it actually means. But a joint venture between Ice and OKEx, definitely.
- [30:13]
E
Yeah, actually I think to me this is huge actually and worth talking about. I'm definitely talking about it today on the show at noon because for a reason. So the announcement effectively is that ice, which is the parent of New York Stock Exchange, who actually owns Part of OkX, I think that was announced in March, if you guys remember, and they took a board seat at OkX while they're launching a joint venture. I think it's a broker dealer and their FTM where they're effectively going to open New York stock exchanges, tokenize markets directly to OkX's 120 million customers all over the world. Now why I find this one so particularly interesting as I dug into it is I think we've seen a lot of examples like Coinbase last week for example, of crypto natives working very hard to attract a non crypto customer base. So you know, offering products that will extend beyond crypto, get the stock investors and the high net worths to participate. And then you have a million stories of Wall street creating things for Wall Street. Right, so like all the ETF, ETFs. Maybe not, but a lot of these income products and you know, bank to bank products. This is the first story I've seen where somebody like New York Stock Exchange is building something specifically to attract hundreds of millions of crypto people to come in.
- [31:34]
A
Right. Well, it's also the Rails. Right. You know, it's also.
- [31:37]
E
Well that's what I mean. They're creating the Rails for crypto exchanges to connect directly to the New York Stock Exchange's tokenized offerings.
- [31:45]
A
Yeah, to me it sounds interesting. Look, I have some friends over there. I'm going to reach out when I get back from playing my poker junket. But to me a large part of what's happening is the technology that underlies a lot of crypto is superior and is going to get adopted. And the sole question from a crypto investor point of view is okay, great, what does this mean? Well, remember, that's why the whole regulatory push at the sec, because these are clearly securities that we're talking about now. We're not talking about crypto assets now.
- [32:23]
E
Yeah, this is for tokenized securities. Right, clearly.
- [32:26]
A
So the question is if they can get the kind of regulatory environment where you don't have $40 million to do an IPO, et cetera, et cetera. It could be a pretty big unlock. And the other big thing is the whole accredited investor rule and all that crap. But if you can fix the trading to be 24, 7, lower friction, et cetera, and you can at the same time get regulatory relief on some of the more esoteric things that are there, you could end up with a lot of really interesting assets and a lot of companies that are building in the space just listing their equities as tokenized equity as opposed to, you know, tokens that you don't know what the hell they're worth. To me, that, that that's where it's ultimately going to go. I just don't know how quick it's going to get there. But it seems like the market wants to push it in that direction. And that's what this is to me. I mean, do you look at it differently? Scott? Nope, Lost him. Okay. Well, anyway, it is kind of a, it feels like it's a big deal to me. You know, when you see this sort of thing and, and a lot of crypto investors, like, are trying to think, well, will their token be involved? And I'm not sure that's necessarily the right question. I think the companies. Yeah, now we can, now we can hear you.
- [33:42]
E
I don't know what's going on. It literally showed me the spaces is unavailable and like disappeared and then the space reappeared. Really good stuff.
- [33:49]
B
Yeah.
- [33:50]
E
I was going to ask you if you saw the Franklin Templeton News on top of the OKX news.
- [33:54]
A
No, I didn't. What did they do?
- [33:57]
E
They propose two new ETFs, DRIP ETFs, which is a dividend reinvestment ETFs, which obviously exist where generally if you're owning an ETF and invest in stocks that have dividends, it automatically reinvests the dividends back into those stocks. They're reinvesting the dividends into Bitcoin. So really interesting. Like two ETFs that will. Basically everything in there throws off a dividend. And when that dividend comes, it automatically buys bitcoin in the fund.
- [34:25]
A
And that's sort of, that's sort of like the, the Grant Cardone, Bitcoin and real estate.
- [34:29]
E
Exactly right.
- [34:30]
A
Combination, which makes a lot of sense as a long. If you think of, if your, if your belief is that bitcoin is going to be the ultimate savings vehicle, then that is an incredibly logical combination. You know, both real estate, dividend doesn't matter. I think it's another way of getting people to see it that way. Because that's really the case. Right. You know, at least as far as I'm concerned. I do think it's interesting.
- [34:53]
E
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of how treasury companies should be. I mean, not with a dividend, but you take your cash flow or your actual earnings and you invest them instead of in dollars in Bitcoin and that becomes like your Treasury. It's just doing it with investing instead.
- [35:05]
A
Right. And that matters. I've said it before with the one thing about strategy that I've always found interesting. And maybe it's bullshit, maybe it's just a pipe dream, maybe I'm just smoking crack, I don't know. But can they lever their Bitcoin hoard and their financial engineering into more banking products and actually generate income, actual income, which then they can use to buy Bitcoin? That's really a question. It's always been an open issue pre strc.
- [35:34]
E
That's what we always believed he was angling towards.
- [35:38]
A
Yeah, but it makes sense. It makes sense post SCRC also.
- [35:42]
E
Yeah. I'm just saying. Then the focus completely became on Strcle, the infinite money glitch and the same old thing.
- [35:49]
B
Right?
- [35:50]
A
Well, there's never such thing. There's no such thing as perpetual motion. Right. You know, and I said it on one of these spaces, I think my words are to the effect of. There is a certain point when it collapses under its own weight, or at least it. But, but long before that it will slow down because of its own weight. And that's exactly what we're seeing. And, and by the way, it's going to speed back up again if bitcoin rallies. Right. You know, you get a strong sustained.
- [36:13]
F
Why do you say long before, Dave? Why do you say long before that? Haven't we typically seen with these sort of things, when they implode, they implode really, really fast.
- [36:21]
A
But they don't have to.
- [36:24]
C
Don't they?
- [36:24]
F
Normally when they implode, they really implode.
- [36:27]
A
And that is why we have that. That was my first point. So what I'm trying to say is if it's structured like Terra Luna was, where it was a self referential hold, the par mechanism where it would burn. Yeah. When it gets to the failure case, it explodes. But there's no failure case here. The failure case is what's the biggest failure? He suspends the dividend. I mean, and when does he do that? He does that a year or two years from now. I mean, there's no need to sell Bitcoin, there's no self referential reason for it to fail. Gbtc, the reason GBTC grayscale was such a disaster wasn't because of what grayscale did, it was that it was the six month time lockup. People forget that you bought bitcoin, you delivered it to grayscale and six months later you got freely traded grayscale that traded at a premium. So during that six months when it flipped from premium to discount, you had a lot of arbitrageurs that had no intention of holding and now held an impaired asset. And they were like, what the fuck? And so there were other firms who had lever and there was a lot of leverage into it. That's why I kept trying to say, Adam, that unless there's a lot of people who levered up to buy sdrc and if you did that, then yeah, you're screwed. And I think, I think those people
- [37:43]
E
got flushed last week. I think that's what happened last week. I think they're gone, right? But at $82, those people lost. They're done, right?
- [37:50]
A
So, but the point is, is once that leverage is gone, it's flush. It's like October 10th, October 10th was massively damaging to the crypto ecosystem to a lot of the people. There are hundreds of thousands of people got wiped out, but they're gone. And they, you know, we're in the period of time when there, people are waking up saying okay, is it safe? Is it safe to get back in the pool yet? Do I have to wait, you know, et cetera. But that's not a, a self referential crash as you know, a vicious circle as it were. Whereas Terra Luna was, and the various crashes, whether it was all the lenders all imploding and then FTX replacing all of people's Bitcoin and Ethereum with FTT token to back themselves and of course venture capital investments. Because after all, Sam was the greatest investor of all time, right, Scott?
- [38:40]
E
God,
- [38:42]
A
for those who don't know that I am joking, I am joking. He basically invested in anything people brought to him and happened to have had a lot of good ones. Because we were right at the beginning
- [38:50]
E
of the AI boom using everybody else's money.
- [38:53]
A
That's right, because he stole people's Bitcoin and Ethereum to give it to Alameda who lost it, replaced it with a token called FTT that he invented and said it was good collateral. And then when CC didn't want to buy it and no one believed that Caroline Ellison was going to support it, that's when they went kabloom.
- [39:11]
C
Isn't his portfolio trace Forward to like $100 billion or something crazy like that?
- [39:16]
A
Sure. Well, you know, if you bought that. But that just tells you how profitable the VC industry has been during this AI boom. And SpaceXpo. Right. You know, cursor was, was a big as one of his, you know, that SpaceX just bought. But that's all that means. I mean, literally, I don't think that the, the rumor was he didn't turn down a single serious investment opportunity with other people's money. So it just, it tells you cross sectionally how incredibly well VCs have done it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that he stole the money and then used it for, for that. I mean, it's like if you steal money from someone, go to Las Vegas, bet on, you know, double bet on, you know, whatever, you know, one number on the wheel it happened to get, win quite often and come back with 10x the money. That doesn't mean that you didn't steal it in the first place.
- [40:06]
E
Yeah, you're stealing money and buying every lottery number. Good job. Right.
- [40:10]
A
So that's all that was. But look, hopefully the thing that drives people crazy is the wild card as well. Is there some version of the world where Trump pardons him? Or some version of the world where President Aoc pardons him or whoever comes next? You know, that's really.
- [40:28]
C
I just shuddered when you said that.
- [40:30]
A
Well, I mean, I don't know what direction we're going in. I mean, Newsom with his wife, this one may actually get him, so he may be gone. I mean, President Kamala, you can say whatever the hell you want to say. I mean, I don't know. It's hard to be more cynical than me. I'm not sure who's more cynical than Scott and I in terms of politics, but we're pretty cynical. But I think that's the thing that makes people shudder. At least it looks pretty obvious that he, that the courts aren't going to go along with any of, any of his crap. But stealing is stealing and there isn't any of that alleged this cycle. When people start talking, like Jamie referred to, you know, the lawyers like talking about, did Mike, did Saylor do marketing that he shouldn't have? Probably. But I will point out, and I pointed out last week, Jamie, I don't know if you're still there, but next time you're talking to any of these guys, just ask them how well did it do to short Tesla When Elon was accused of exactly what Sailor's been accused of. How will that work out? And I'm not saying it's going to be the same, although I suspect it's going to be very similar.
- [41:38]
E
Yeah, but I mean, the disclosures are there, right? I'm not saying that like the marketing is appropriate or whatever, but like there is, you know, they can point to the disclosures and say it's there.
- [41:49]
A
Oh, I know, I'm aware. And it's like, that's kind of my point. My point is, is that, you know, people will always, it's like after something is blown up, people will always like, like point to it and say, oh, well, it's going to continue to blow up. I think selling on the basis of that here is the same as buying when we've had two or three weeks of, of ridiculous leverage and froth. Right. You know, it's, it's, it's just, it's the same thing. It's, it's that. It's the old meme, you know, at 100,000 or 120,000 people are lined up around the block to buy it. And at 60,000 people like EH, you know, and there's crickets there. It's just, it's the same thing. And it's just, it's over and over and over again. And unfortunately we talk about this every day because we're in the summer and it's probably going to stay like this for a while, but we'll see.
- [42:36]
D
I mean, to me, to me, it, it, it signifies, you know, bear market, you know, sentiment. So like, you know, it, it just baffles me like how people are just going crazy at this that right now it's like. And then I think about it, I'm like, we went from 16, 000 to 126 and know, has nobody taken any profits or trimmed a little or rebalanced anything that, like, where it takes a turn and it's like everybody just loses their mind and it's like, you know, like it's. I don't know, it just, it just signals to me that like, you know, this, this is a possibly a good buying opportunity. We're in the lower ranges and it's a, a great asset. Nothing's changed. And I just think you, you get into good quality assets over a long period of time. You do really well. So I just try to balance out the crazy sentiment that I hear in these spaces on either side and just try to kind of keep it neutral.
- [43:29]
A
Well, I think a lot of these spaces are echo chambers. I saw Ryan waving at me before I teed up. Scott, about the 200 week moving average.
- [43:38]
C
I was going to say one thing to watch, especially with the AI shift. A lot of miners have been taking mining hardware offline and switching over to AI because it's just more lucrative. Because of that, we're seeing huge difficulty drops in the network and we'll probably see that escalating throughout the year. So I, I mean, it might be a good time to start picking up mining hardware and then bringing it online by the end of the year. You might be sitting really nicely with margins, man.
- [44:07]
A
If you have, if you have access to power. That makes a lot of sense. Yep, makes a lot of sense. And, and you know, Scott, as you always say, it's like you generally don't do badly when you're buying around the 200 week moving average.
- [44:21]
E
It's Munger, not me. I just quote the king, Charlie Munger. He's the one who said.
- [44:26]
A
Well, he probably wouldn't be saying that about rat poison squared though.
- [44:28]
E
No, he loves bitcoin. Rest in peace.
- [44:32]
A
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's, I think I don't want to dive into any other topics today.
- [44:38]
E
No, we did it. You did it. I should say. Good job.
- [44:41]
A
So, yeah, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get my ass out of bed at seven in the morning on Wednesday, but I'll give it a try. But.
- [44:47]
E
Well, let us know how the, how the tournament goes.
- [44:50]
A
Well, I get to play in the super Seniors event today, which is why I came out here. So it's like, yeah, fire up the wheelchair.
- [44:58]
F
Wait, what is Super Seniors? There are regular seniors that are really polite.
- [45:04]
D
I.
- [45:05]
A
The seniors event at the World Series of Poker is for people over, over 55. Zero years. These super seniors are when you're over 60. And I am sure, even though I am comfortably over 60, that I will get some of them asking to see my driver's license. Are you really 60 year old? Because, you know, whatever. And I'm going to show up.
- [45:22]
D
Do you get to like hit it like a closer tee? Like what. How does this work on a poker
- [45:26]
E
table in front of the reds?
- [45:28]
B
Hey, Dave, they're asking for your license because of your boyish good looks.
- [45:32]
E
Yeah, that's what he's saying.
- [45:33]
C
The cards have bigger print on them.
- [45:35]
D
Yeah, I, I'm not the font.
- [45:37]
A
I, I've never, I've never played it before, but I targeted it. It probably means I'm gonna go, go out early and it'll be a flame out, so we'll see. But you know, who the hell knows? But in any event, yeah.
- [45:48]
F
Wait, are you gonna be live streaming this so we can follow along? Dave, you gotta live stream this for.
- [45:52]
A
No, you can't, you can't.
- [45:53]
F
Oh, they won't let you do it, of course.
- [45:55]
A
Yeah, they do it.
- [45:56]
B
Yeah.
- [45:56]
E
You mean they don't let you video yourself? It's weird.
- [46:01]
C
Those meta glasses.
- [46:02]
F
Yeah, the meta glasses. Dave's wolcard, man.
- [46:06]
A
Yeah. Never. Never. The only way you're seeing my whole card is if I end up at a TV table, which, which I have at one point in my life. But it's been, it's been a while. But anyway, yeah, so I'm gonna show up in my Ferrari shirt and you know, and, and, and we'll see. But yeah, I don't need a wheelchair to walk. But I, I, I'll probably wear my knee brace just so I look like I fit in.
- [46:26]
E
Yeah, you gotta be in, you gotta looking firm and weak.
- [46:29]
C
Just live stream your hands and put it up on Poly Market in real time so we can all bet on what you're gonna do.
- [46:34]
A
Oh, man.
- [46:35]
F
Yeah.
- [46:36]
A
The sad reality is that probably some people will do like that at some point, but you know, that will not be me for sure. I go, I, I go into a zone and that's it. So anyway, everybody, enjoy the rest of your day. I've already told you what I'll be doing. I'm just gonna go to the gym now and get my, get my, get my my together.
- [46:52]
B
Good luck.
- [46:54]
E
Thanks, Dave. Thanks. All right, everybody, thanks. Bye.