← The Wolf Of All Streets
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Something very strange is happening in the markets right now. Investor sentiment around crypto is absolutely terrible. Yet adoption keeps accelerating. And while traders panic and the stock market wipes out 800 billion on war and oil fears, the biggest institutions in finance are quietly moving deeper into crypto. However, cracks are forming across traditional finance. Private credit funds are restricting withdrawals, banks are tightening lending, and defaults are rising fast. There's so much to unpack. I'm not sure that I'm the right person to unpack all of it, but I'm going to go ahead and do my best on my Friday freestyle here, my solo show. Let's go. Let's dope. Good morning everybody and happy Friday. I hope that you're all having a wonderful one and not paying too much attention to the news because that will just give you anxiety and make you sad and hate yourself and everybody else around you. But magically, if you just don't open Twitter or CNN or Fox or whatever is your flavor of choice, you just go outside and play with your kids and probably, unless you unfortunately live in a war torn country, you could probably just go about your day and not worry about any of it. But here we are, 9am on a Friday, having to worry about all of it, because that's our job. Now, as I said in the beginning, we have a very strange kind of push and pull right now where sentiment is in the dumps, but institutions are massively adopting crypto. Now, before we dive directly into that, I want to tell you about one amazing institution that has adopted crypto, and that of course is our amazing sponsor, Abraham Wolves Grow Crypto wealth with Abra. I've been telling you about them for quite a long time. You guys know that I'm good friends with their CEO Bill Barheit, but you know, they provide individuals and institutions with a more secure way to control, manage and grow digital asset wealth from your own separately managed account, which is extremely important. You control all of your assets. You can get exposure to crypto crypto products like yield and lending through one full service platform. What I love about them is that they're always accessible to help you. This isn't the type of service even though you can just go on the website and choose a product and very simply take a loan. All very easy. You can actually discuss with one of their professionals what your priorities are, what you want to accomplish, how you want to use the loan, how much you should take. They'll break it all down for you and work with you very closely to make sure that you take a loan that will be very safe, very easy to manage and that will fulfill all the priorities that you have. I can't recommend them enough. It's probably product that I obviously use, which is why we're talking about it. So go check out Abra now. Speaking of institutions that are adopting our beloved asset class, digital assets are entering a new phase, but once ran in parallel to existing financial systems is increasingly being applied to solve practical real world news, often behind the scenes, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. Today we introduce the mastercard Crypto Partner program, a global initiative that brings together more than 85 crypto native companies, payments providers and financial institutions. News to me today that there are actually 85 viable crypto native companies, but I guess they did also include payment providers and financial institutions there. They're creating a forum for meaningful dialogue and collaboration as this space continues to mature. Now when I read that story, what I actually think is MasterCard is really, really scared that crypto is going to eat their lunch, which is already happening. We know that stablecoins and payment processors like Stripe and others are using stablecoins and that nobody's going to be wanting to use the MasterCard and Visa payment networks. Now to their credit, they've been on top of crypto and blockchain technology for quite a long time trying to find ways to adopt it, trying to avoid being the blockbuster of this generation. But I'm not sure it's going to happen because nothing stops this stablecoin and payment trade on train on blockchain rails that is inevitably leading the station. So yes, I think there's big news for MasterCard. I think that they're trying this yet again is just one of those stories that we'll forget about completely but is important for the plumbing of crypto. And one day we'll look back at a bull market and go, man, a lot of important things happened back then. But definitely worth noting that MasterCard is all over this right now. They're not the only ones. Wells Fargo Fire emoji big 245 billion Wells Fargo files a trademark for what the fuck us what? So WFUSD. WFUSD signaling potential crypto services or a dollar peg stablecoin. I would have gone with WTFUSD. Honestly, like if you're gonna do it, go all the way. Like I'm still mad PayPal spelled it P yUSD. That's PSD. It's close, right? This should have been WTF USD. But yeah, I mean it's a trademark, guys. Like, I don't know if that Definitely means all the things we want it to mean. But clearly Wells Fargo here, 99% chance, probably about to either launch some sort of stablecoin or some sort of platform that's using crypto, rails and stablecoins because they're Wells Fargo and they literally have to. Just like MasterCard, we have these stories every day. It's like Morgan Stanley, Visa, JP Morgan, you name it, every single one of them. They're coming along for the ride. I guess the inevitable question is if they all come along for the ride, does that mean that we're all screwed because they basically just adopted the technology without giving us any tokens that we can bet on and speculate on and make money on. But either way, if you're here for the tech and in IT for the future of blockchain, these are all very big stories. Another very big story here. Bitcoin has 571 million on chain users, growing over 10 million a quarter. USDT has a little fewer users. 550. So 21 million short. 21 million. See that number. But is growing over 30 million a quarter. Proud to follow bitcoin's lead. What Paolo is quietly saying here, and he is very much a bitcoiner, but also the CEO of Tether is, he's saying the Tether's pouch. Pass Bitcoin next week and I'm here for it. Listen, they're not competitive. In my mind, it is ironic that the two killer use cases of blockchain technology are Bitcoin, which is effectively a digital store of value, much like gold. We've all talked about the properties of bitcoin and why it's important and savings technology and blah, blah, blah. And that the other killer use case is literally the thing that blockchain and Bitcoin, excuse me, was created as a hedge against, which is fiat. But the fiat side of digital money is absolutely exploding. And I think it's very clear that there is going to be no end to that any time soon. Now let's talk about the things on the regulatory front. Our favorite topics as bitcoiners is what our favorite regulatory agencies are doing. It's so annoying, by the way, that this is the stuff we have to talk about every day, but here we are. Okay, Crypto's getting crazier by the day. Breaking. The SEC and the CFTC just published an MOU to coordinate regulation of digital asset markets between the two agencies. Here you go. There's a little story on it right there. Basically, if you're looking for a TLDR on this story. The idea is that these guys used to hate each other in the last administration, and there was a big turf war and they were fighting over it. And now Atkins and Selig are like, hey, dude, we're on the same team, man. Let's work together. Let's get this crypto thing under wraps, right? And it's good news alongside Clarity, which we'll get into in a moment. Like, we can all debate endlessly whether Clarity will or won't pass. But one thing we do know is that we will have a favorable regulatory environment, even if we don't have a favorable legislative environment. So even if Clarity does not pass, which, listen, a lot of people don't even want it to in its current form because it can be so sinister. But even if Clarity doesn't pass, these regulators are clearly going to try to set a lot of precedent, a lot of rulemaking, figuring this all out in advance, giving the industry the opportunity to actually shine, whether we have legislation or do not. Which then, of course, puts the onus on the crypto industry itself. Me. Hi. I'm the problem. It's me. That's me. We're the crypto industry to actually prove that we're worth something. So we're fucked because we're not. No, I'm kidding. Stablecoins are. Bitcoin is. But, yeah, I mean, let's be intellectually honest. Like, a lot of the things that we've gotten retail really excited about, like NFTs and DeFi and Metaverse and whatever, tacos and yams and farming, like, that stuff didn't work out that great. So this is the time when we're going to actually have to prove our mettle before inevitably the pendulum swings in the other direction and we get regime change and we get a government that hates us. Because that is how governments work. They love you. They hate you. They love you. She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not. That's what we get from the industry. Except for Elizabeth Warren. She just hates us. She just loves us. Not all the time. And meanwhile, while all of this is happening, the crypto industry making some huge steps here. Of course, this is news from earlier in the week, but worth mentioning once again. Kraken is first crypto firm to secure Fed payment access. This is big news. Kraken, already a bank in Wyoming, getting the fresh first skinny account here that was mentioned by Governor Waller so many months ago. Basically giving our industry, for the first time, access to the Fed's payment rails and you literally can't do anything in the United States without access to Fed payment. Rails like this is actually very, very important. But what people don't realize is that this skinny master account basically means they can only do that and can't do any of the other beautiful things that we get from fractional reserve banking like loaning out all of your assets and keeping no reserves and waiting to be bailed out by the government. There's actually a better version of a bank to be honest with the skinny account, but leave nothing to chance. Says the banking industry who hates everything crypto and everything innovation and everything competition because free market top US banks way suing federal regulator over crypto banking rules Exclusive bank policy institute bpi representing lenders such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs argues that new licenses could harm US consumers and financial systems. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Kraken. That's a mythical beast from the water that will come to kill us all. Kraken coming to destroy a bank near you, right? I mean they're fearful of everything. They're afraid of stablecoins, they're afraid of legislation, they're afraid of banks getting licenses or crypto companies getting licenses. And it makes you wonder what their intention could possibly be. I don't know. I mean banks, they're for us, right? They're our guys, they hold our money and safety. We can trust them. No, the banks are just trying to, you know, protect their self interest, create a massive moat around them and not let anybody participate in the scam that is the United States banking system. Guys, banks take your money. My most viral thread actually I ever wrote on Twitter, I think was about this where I gave an example of a guy giving, you know, a bank $10,000 and the bank takes that, takes, takes that money, which is a liability and turns it into an asset by loaning it for $9,000. And then that next bank takes that and turns it into an asset when that guy deposits it and turns it into 90% less and endlessly, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. And eventually every dollar goes and becomes $10. It's magic. It's magic. And you might have missed the part in 2020 during COVID when they actually lowered that reserve requirement down from 10% to zero. So bank actually doesn't have to hold any of your money. You get nothing for that. You take all the risk, they'll get bailed out. You theoretically take all the risk, you get none of the reward. They take your money, they go earn 4, 5, 6, 12, 87% if it's Celsius I don't know, lot of percents on your money and you get left with like a half a percent and a whole lot of anxiety. And so let's not pretend that the banks here are for you or for anyone else. This was the original promise of bitcoin and crypto and now we're seeing it all the quiet parts being said out loud. They're trying very hard to protect this and eventually, eventually they will adopt or lose. And honestly, they're probably just slowing us down in time so they have enough time to adopt before they lose. Thune wants action on permitting and crypto. Permitting, permitting. Tomato, tomato and crypto. After voter ID bill, so many people think we're going to get a voter ID bill. You're going to have to actually prove that you're a human being and not an agentic, AI optimist robot when you go to vote. Now that's going to be a law at least for the next three weeks before the robots take over and start voting for themselves and for themselves and for other robots and we're all dead. But this is important before we die, is that we get legislation on the books pushing very hard to get the Clarity act going forward after this Voter ID act is done. But come on, man, we've been hearing it like, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. We're at like fool me 27 times right now with the Clarity act, honestly. And you know this from Coindesk latest. Former CFTC chair says banks need the digital asset market Clarity act more than crypto. Without regulatory certainty, they won't build digital payment rails. Weird. Sounds familiar because maybe this news story is based on my podcast. Do you see my name? No. Who asked him that? Amazing question that elicited this response in person in New York on my podcast, on YouTube and your favorite streaming station everywhere this last Sunday, Chris Giancarlo. From my conversation with Chris Giancarlo, he said actually, you know, listen, banks want to adopt this technology because they have to, because they don't want to get blockbustered by Netflix. But what can they do? They gotta slow it all down and then eventually pass a very watered down act that actually protects the banks. It's called Clarity. But it's actually clarity for banks and not for the crypto industry. Much like the Inflation Reduction act did not actually reduce inflation. Right. They gaslight us a lot with the titles of these acts and the intention, but he's saying that the banks actually need this to be able to custody these assets and participate and allow the trading services and all the things that they want to do. So they need it as much as as we do. It's a really interesting take. And he was the chairman of the cftc, so I'm going to believe his opinion rather than my own. And interestingly, he also made the point that the Genius act may have not been as amazing as we thought it was because it effectively gave the government and tech companies full visibility into our transactions and all the privacies that we would have hoped for are long gone. You know, the Genius act does not treat stablecoins like cash. They treat them as a surveillance instrument that allow your transactions to be frozen and could be the worst forms of what we imagine from a cbdc. And we all cheered it along and great. Meanwhile, huge, the US Senate passed a bill that includes a CBDC issuance ban on the Federal Reserve till 2030. Only 2030, that's in like four years. Who cares? But cool. And this was the bipartisan U.S. senate housing bill. 21st century road to Housing Act. So they basically stuffed a CBDC prohibition into a housing act. That's cool. But like I said, we may have kind of CBDC'd ourselves in the Genius act already. So I'm not sure at the end of the day how much this matters. Now pivoting to what everyone wants to talk about stunks. Extreme fear hits the stock market for the first time this year. I thought we were in extreme fear like a month or two ago, but maybe it was like on December 30th so it wasn't technically this year. I'm not sure but we've talked. Everybody has a different fear and greed indicator anyways. But we were like five at one point and the stock market was a few percent from all time highs. Well, we're there again. It just shows you how much uncertainty there is and fear in markets. Even with prices very high. There's a massive gap between the price of all of these assets and how people feel about owning them. And that's probably not a very good thing. I think it's more likely that the price of the assets reverts to the mean of sentiment than that sentiment reverts to the mean of the price of assets. But who knows, it could definitely go either way. And a lot of that obviously has to do with all the missiles and bombs and drones that are flying around the Middle east at the moment. JP Morgan always has a take. That's probably in their own self interest. JP Morgan says go long. Energy stocks short the market until The Strait of Hormuz reopens. Raise of hands. How many of you actually had heard of the strait of Hormuz 2 weeks ago who are now experts in Hormuziness? I find myself to be an expert in the Straits of Hormuz and all geopolitical things. And oil. No I'm not. That's why I ask smarter people questions. But they're basically saying that the stock market is in trouble as long as the Straits of Hormuz are closed. And last I checked, Iran was dropping a whole bunch of mines in there. There were a few things on fire and yeah, not really looking that great at the moment. I mean there, I think there was tankers blowing up in Iraq, which isn't even like right there. Just a whole lot going on, a lot of geopolitical uncertainty and a lot of people scratching their head and wondering what the fuck we're doing in Iran in the first place. And meanwhile this number may have changed by the time we have gone live since it's from yesterday. But breaking 800 billion wiped out from US stocks as war uncertainty pushes oil above 95 bucks s and P Dow. Yeah, whatever. This just confirms what I'm saying is that we're seeing a lot of value wiped out because people are uncertain. But we're still very close to all time highs even with all that happening. And then the other story which I touched on yesterday obviously with Mike Alfred, but Morgan Stanley restricts Redemptions, a private credit fund after withdrawal. Search Private Credit It'll kill you and your kids twice. Morgan Stanley is restricting. Right, we saw that JP Morgan is no longer loaning to any of these private creditors and is actually marking down their loan port portfolios. None of us know what private credit is. Let's be honest, private credit defaults are up 4x since 2024. There's the asset class for a stress test. Investors are bracing for a blow up. Profits returned to private equity investors are up are at a 16 year low per Bloomberg. All things that sound kind of bag and, and of course Douchebank. I read that that bank with The D flags a 30 billion exposure to private credit. So a lot of expos credit which now is the next thing that apparently much like tariffs and yen carry trade is going to inevitably explode everything and send all of your beloved stonks, except for Gamestop of course down to zero. But meanwhile, while that's happening and there's fear in the market, hedge funds are actually acting on it. Which hedge funds are shorting stocks at the highest level since 2022. Usually they're not all right at the same time, to be quite honest. So if you're looking for a. What I would view through my lens as a bit of optimism on this is that if everybody is short, somebody can squeeze those and send it down. Now, listen, everybody wants to know what comes next for bitcoin and whether it's at 65 or 70 or 75 today or 80 or 60. I squarely am wearing a bitcoin shirt. So I don't really need to say it. I'm wearing a bitcoin shirt. You know, I'm a bitcoiner. I believe it's going to go up. Does that mean it's going to go up tomorrow or in six months or in a year and it doesn't go down first? I have no idea because my crystal ball has been proven dysfunctional. It's broken and it sucks. Said maybe. When I asked it a question at a Magic 8 ball, I shook it. Will bitcoin go up or down? Call me maybe. But the reality is you should really like bitcoin in this area long term. And the reality is you should only be looking at it long term. I know, I know. I'm the guy who shows up every day with a title that's like Bitcoin 70,000, Bitcoin 72,000, Bitcoin 68,000. It's like Bitcoin's going up because it's 72. It's going down to 68. Bitcoin broken, Bitcoin collapse. What comes next? Who's going next? Yeah, we need the algorithm. Sad. My title should be Go home and don't watch my show because nothing happened. It doesn't get clicks, it doesn't work. And I still haven't done this yet. For the record, I'm not doing that on my thumbnails yet. Can you see it or. But we can capture those and use them later. So, to be fair, I'm guilty of the hyperbolic titles that use the same price over and over again in different directions. Just the game you have to play. But I stopped short of the stupid faces, mostly because my face looks particularly stupid doing stupid faces. And I'm cognizant of that at 49 years old. But the bottom line is bitcoin will probably go up a lot over time. And I'm taking full advantage of the opportunity to aggressively dollar cost average it into it here while I can. And I don't give financial advice, but I firmly believe that that is the safest path. So that you like me can go away this weekend and touch some grass. I know some of you, I see you smoke some grass, but most of you are just going to touch touch it. Is there even grass in the north yet? I don't know. Touch some snow, barren wastelands. But yeah, go touch whatever you can touch that is not this market. And have a wonderful weekend. I will see you all on Monday. From Acromunday. That's dope.