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Dave
Well, good morning everyone. It is Friday, May 2, and we are here for Crypto Town hall at. Well, 1018 seems to be about par for the course. Bitcoin kind of hanging out, not doing much other markets up a bit on strong data. Ish, interesting data actually. Maybe we dig into that later, but since we have a guest speaker fresh from Dubai at the airport, Mr. Scott Melker, I'd be curious to get your, your quick wrap on all the festivities at Token out in Dubai and what, what the vibe was like.
Scott Melker
It gave me extreme FOMO that I was missing the show every day and couldn't discuss it. So after a 15 and a half hour flight, I decided to jump right on here. So I'm getting into a car from the airport. It was, it was very interesting this year, to be honest. You know, we've talked about the circumference circuit in the past and how I use it generally as a gauge for the vibe of the market. And you'll all remember from listening to the show for the past years, every time we'd have a conference in the United States, obviously in the past administration, it was almost like going to a funeral. You know, I remember consensus last year, maybe it was two years ago, and most of the booths were lawyers and accountants instead of being NFT projects and new protocols. And, you know, the vibe was absolutely horrid because nobody knew what they were allowed to do, nobody knew who was allowed to be a sponsor. And then you'd go to Asia, Singapore, dubai for token 2549 or a conference in another country and it was like none of that existed. There was no sbf, there was no Gary Gensler, there was no contagion. Everybody was building and excited. So it was like a funeral in the US And Coachella on the flip side now, I would imagine that you'll go to Bitcoin Vegas this year and it'll be exactly the opposite. And to be quite honest, it's still a great vibe abroad. But I think that there's a healthy level of skepticism now that wasn't there before, probably because of how poorly the altcoin market has performed and how popular memes have been and how the veil has somewhat been lifted on people's interest in projects that are actually building and utility and sort of the realization that coins move largely because of speculation and not because of underlying fundamentals. So I would say that this year everybody comes up to me, obviously, hey man, let me pitch you my thing 200 times. And in the past it would be like, let me pitch you My thing, man. I would love for you to invest a couple thousand bucks. Like, crowded rounds. I don't generally do that, by the way, but crowded rounds invest, you know, promote it. Now it's like, hey, we're trying to raise a round. Can you fill the whole round yourself? I'll give you the whole thing. Like, you want to invest $200,000 instead of $2,000. And obviously, I also say no to that, but it seems like there's a lot of trouble fundraising for a lot of these things and just a healthy level of skepticism that there's too much being built. A lot of it will be brilliant. Dave, your mic is going a little crazy, by the way, but might want to mute. But just. I think it's maybe a healthy level of skepticism, and everybody's not at full FOMO abroad at the moment.
Dave
That's cool. It's.
Scott Melker
You know, I met your co founder, and by the way, I hung out with your co founder for, like, 30 or 45 minutes.
Dave
Yeah, well, we'll talk about that this weekend. He actually wasn't a co founder. He was a later co founder. He joined us about a year after Ian and I founded. But that's okay.
Scott Melker
I shouldn't have said founder. I should have said partner. There you go.
Dave
Yeah, there you go. But anyway, yeah, it's all cool. The thing that'll be more interesting to me is I'll be really curious to see the bitcoin conference this year in Vegas. And being in the United States, the timing of this particular year for Consensus to be in Toronto is curious, but I guess we'll see.
Scott Melker
Nobody's going. I couldn't find a single person that was excited to go to Consensus.
Alex
Nobody's doing Consensus, and I don't feel.
Dave
Bad for not going myself for the same reason. But the bitcoin conference for me is cool. I booked my room at the Horseshoe because that's where the World Series of Poker is for a week, you know, past it. So I'll be there one way or the other. But anyway, so, you know, as far as the market goes, the other big event yesterday, which, you know, thanks to Mario's roundtable account, we all got to listen to Saylor's earnings call. I don't know if you caught any of that, Scott, but honestly, it was very impressive. He. He. He basically explained their strategy, you know, and forget the. Forgive the pun, in very simple terms, very, very clear, you know, where it was going from, answered a lot of the questions. I'm sure we'll still hear fud. From people talking about how overleveraged they are, et cetera. But I thought that he did a great job. I was curious, am I the only one who thought that he explained the strategy well or what are people thinking? But the bottom line was if you want to distill it down is they're not highly leveraged. That, you know, he talks about it in 10 year time frame, in 10 year time horizons for a reason because he really can't be shaken out of his position. And it really boils down to what you think the price of Bitcoin will do over the next 10 years. And you know, the way he expressed it I thought was that was really. Well, he said, listen, you know, you have, will it perform as the stock market performs, you know, 7% give or take, you know, will it be a 10% asset or as Maxis believe it will be a 30%, you know, return asset? And you pick your, you pick your poison, whichever you think and then you understand which product or what makes sense. And I thought that was a pretty good way of framing it. Anybody else have any comments on, on, on that particular thing? Because I know several of you were listening with me.
I can weigh in if you want. Dave.
Sure.
Hi, happy to be here. So I think it's a 50kgar asset. So if you look at like standard models like the, the berm which is the bitcoin or autocorrelated exchange rate model, it's a quantitative model that just accounts for having supply shock but also the, the fact that they are more, there's, they are diminishing returns to that supply shock. Right. So it's a rather conservative model. You still get around 50 plus KEGR per annum over the next 10 years. So I think it's, it's rather, yeah, it's higher than 30. Definitely.
I mean if you really, if you believe that then it's, it's, if that turns out, forget 50, if 30 turns out to be the case, which is still rather, rather high over 10 years, then MSTR is essentially like, you know, bitcoin on steroids. And you know, like I'm a, I'm a holder, I'm not going to lie about it. I mean if that's what happens, you know, over the next 10 years, then you know, I, I will have a very, very comfortable retirement. We'll leave it at that full retirement as opposed to retiring from one company to do other things.
I mean MSCR is bitcoin and steroids.
David
Right.
Dave
I think since the US Bitcoin ETF launch has outperformed Bitcoin by a factor of 2.4 or something.
Right.
So there has a beta of 2.4, but of course it's like downside and upside beta. Right?
Yeah, well, and the volatility is there. Arguably the most important point that he made is that they are able to harness the volatility of MSTR and the volatility of Bitcoin with financial engineering. He didn't use those words. He used other words. But to me that's important because every time people get into these conversations and I'm going to call on you, Gary, in a second, so don't be surprised. Every time people get into conversations about microstrategy, the question is, well, others are going to come in. We know what 21 is going to come in and they lose their edge. I think they have two edges. One is scale. But the other is something that I think. Gary, you articulate really well. You know, your psycho line yesterday, I think deserves some commentary.
Gary
Which line? The cycle.
Dave
The psycho. When you called him a psychopath. But in a very constructive way. I thought you expressed it better than I could.
Gary
Well, you need like this guy's one. How old is Sailor? He's 60, 70, 65. What is he?
Dave
Don't know.
Gary
He's been, he's been. He's been beat up by every large Monopoly software company for 20 years, dude. Like he's been eating second class meal and, and he's a very bright guy. So I think with a guy like that, he's multi billionaire already. I look at. Okay, what's driving this cat? This cat wants to look, this cat's putting on a once in a century trade. And I think he wants to go down as a monster. Monster player. He told my brother he was a. For launching the coin, launching the first real estate deal. And then Grant comes in and does 13 of these deals. That's the kind of guy we need, I guarantee you. Okay, Complete psychopath. And I say that with really so much admiration. I don't use that as a bad term because I was hearing some other people, in fact that XRP army thing that they did this debate which was really poor, but the guy just kept talking about sailors. A psychopath. I'm like, what are you talking about? I mean this is. You want. He reminds me of a good Jeff Skillings.
Dave
That's an interesting one.
Gary
He does though. He does. Hey, Skillings was genius, dude. I mean very, very smart man. He just went, you know, he was probably always pretty toxic, but I think, I think this is A, I mean just to be able to watch it, like I own a chunk of this stuff and it's, I do think that's what he's doing and I think he's got a bigger and better moat than these new players.
Dave
Well, I guess we'll find out as far as moats are concerned. But the truth is that it is exceedingly clear if you, if you have good eyesight that his strength of conviction is, is unmatched. You know, you could argue that Jack Mallers has the same strength of conviction but he doesn't continue to put his own money, you know, there. Maybe he does, I don't know. But you know, what is very clear is if Michael Saylor is correct, even if he's off by a factor of two, he will be the richest person, he will have built the biggest, you know, the highest market cap company on the planet. That's just, that's just fact.
Gary
And he may end up being the richest guy on the planet. Well, I think that's the play we're doing here.
Dave
Now obviously what I just said is fascinating because it's basically what I said is even if he is off by a factor of two, so let's say his predictions, you know, his 10 year prediction of bitcoin is double what it will be. You know, it ends up being half of that. That's the strength of conviction. Now obviously it could be hyperbole. We don't know what he really thinks. We don't know what will really happen. Personally I think that the, and I get a lot of flack for this. I'm called the permeable for this. I think bitcoin is destined to at a minimum in 20, $25, reach the level that is effectively gold's market cap. So I think that you're talking about a easy 10x from here. I think it's much, much harder from there beyond simply because the financial world will fight very hard not to be measured in bitcoin. And so there's going to be a lot of twists and turns in that race.
Gary
But so you say Dave, 10x on the 1.82 billion dollar Bitcoin valuation today. So you see that doing 20 billion. 20 trillion.
Dave
Yeah, I'm thinking 20 trillion. That's right. I think it's. If you think of this as a race, as a long term race and bitcoiners always think about it this way, then I think that at this point we've reached escape velocity to get there, when we get there. I hate that I've been Early in pretty much every one of these predictions that I've made in my entire career yet they've all ended up being basically right. So I'm pretty confident in that sort of thing. But I think that all of the risks, real things that could have happened to stop that are done. I mean they're gone. And I think that that matters. The difference is gold. For those who remember, gold used to be represent somewhere in the north of 80% of monetary aggregates and now it's somewhere around 8%. Well, okay, so the question is bitcoiners think that it will be the denominator for all of finance. And that is, you know what? Effectively we don't have one of those right now. Whether or not that will happen is an interesting question. I mean personally I think the world will be a better place if it does. But I think it's going to be very interesting to get there. The point is, is I don't think, I think the risk reward on Bitcoin, at least for the next, you know, for, for that kind of a rally is ridiculously high. And that's why it's, you know, that, that's why. And I think by the way that there are a lot of people piling into bitcoin for that reason as it starts to approach gold. I think that the huddling phenomena will reverse unless there are depending on what's going on politically at that time. So that's, that's kind of my thesis and it's a bit different than sailors, but it works out to the same for at least the next few years in all likelihood. I don't know what people think about that.
Gary
Come on.
Dave
Personally I think it makes total sense because like, it doesn't need to like Bitcoin doesn't even need to disrupt gold technology technologically, right? Just needs to match the, the market cap, right? Kev, you could have some kind of 50, 50 percentage share right until the end of this decade, right? And then you end up with like US$1 million per coin. Right? Which makes sense in my view because it's like it's a competing store value, it's a competing reserve asset and it doesn't even compete with gold alone. It competes with U.S. treasuries, right? U.S. treasuries are the post 1971 reserve asset, right? The de facto reserve asset. And golds like the pre 1971 old Reserve Estes. So it's competing against postal. I think the potential for bitcoin to reach 1 million, right. Is, is quite high.
Right.
Just in terms of gold. But I mean it's also competing against other stores of value, right?
Well that, that's an interesting question. I don't know that that's true. I mean the notion we. I got into a, into a debate with some with a lunatic bitcoin maxi on X yesterday and I was just in one of those moods so I decided to get snarky. I don't know if anyone saw that exchange. But you know, when I listen to people who are bitcoin maxis, there are some that are intelligent about it because they understand that bitcoin to be a bitcoin maxi in my mind should mean I believe Bitcoin is the measuring stick for the economy. That's what you believe will happen and there's nothing wrong with that. That is a perfectly rational way of looking at it. And if that's what your belief is and that's what you're working toward, more power to you. But that is a far cry from those. And Scott, I don't know if you can still hear this, you'll probably laugh but that is a far cry from those who say that means that any other token has no value whatsoever. There's no reason for a native token on any other blockchain or any other representation of financial assets because the entire world will be bitcoin and there are people like that. And I find it amazing whenever I encounter them because it makes no sense. It's sort of like it's the argument that because I strongly believe that every single equity, I don't care, Nvidia, Apple, doesn't matter, Tesla, whatever will all be eventually represented by a token on a blockchain. Why? Because it'll allow for multi currency trading natively for 24.7clearance. It's much more efficient than the paper certificates that they are represented by today. And yes, they are represented by paper certificates in a vault held by DTCC and then it's represented on a computer and street name and you can go through all that plumbing, it doesn't really matter. But once you understand that every asset will be. I hate when I get calls. It doesn't make any sense. So that, that's really, you know, part of the interesting thing. I mean Scott, I don't know if you can still hear this or still. I know. Did you opinions?
Scott Melker
Did you see the news that the dttc. We didn't even talk about it, I don't think. But on April 2nd the DTCC announced a new platform for tokenized real time collateral management.
Dave
Yep.
Scott Melker
It'S the largest story ever that was completely missed by everyone.
Dave
So as it turns out, I am speaking at a panel in Boston with Robert from DTCC who runs that team. And you know, we were talking about it yesterday on our prep call. They are all in on the notion of real time collateral management. And that is a huge story. And I will talk about that after because I'll obviously have the chance to sit down and talk with Robert about this and get a really good idea of what it will be and what it won't be. They also have a video which I have yet to watch but I'm told is very interesting. And I'll post that as well after I have a chance to look at it. But nobody really understands, I think in traditional finance what bitcoin as pristine collateral will mean and what tokenized collateral can do in terms of velocity of transactions. And that is, you're right, it's a very big story. I just haven't talked about it yet because I'm not going to know much. I'm going to learn so much about it next week.
Scott Melker
Yeah, yeah. It's the way that the puck is moving and even the largest institutions in the world know it. I mean, I had a hundred of these conversations at Token 2049, obviously, and I was sitting with people from Blackrock and there were a lot of institutional people there, but nobody wants to be Blockbuster and Kodak and Sears Roebuck and they see it and they know it. And so you can take I guess, a cynical or a positive view on the institutionalization of the asset class or of the industry. But the visas and the Mastercards and the DTCCs realize that there's a technological revolution happening here. And by the way, that doesn't mean your token goes up. Everyone you know, for, for whatever project you believe in, but they are going to be utilizing this technology to improve settlement times and collateralization. They understand all of that. The question is whether they'll co it or whether there'll still be something left for us.
Dave
Well, I mean, I think that it's extremely clear. Two things that are extremely clear and then a lot of fuzziness. The two things that are extremely clear is, number one, all of this is 100% going to help Bitcoin because the impediments to the use of Bitcoin as a store of value are all falling away. So that's number one. Right. You know, it's extremely clear with the President calling it a strategic asset, the likelihood that there are some other people throwing rocks at bitcoin, if you think of the path that bitcoin has been rallying, I use the American gladiator analogy. It's not exactly been a flat race. Right. People have been dodging and throwing things. I think they're at the point now where there's no one being thrown at it. The second thing that's very clear is that stablecoins are going to dramatically increase the velocity of the ability and remove the friction in money transfers. And that has lots of implications, that is implications for AI, that is implications for a lot of what's going on in the token ecosystems. But it doesn't necessarily mean that layer one of choice is going to win in its vertical, those different things.
Scott Melker
What's going to happen is we're going to have. This is my new theory on what causes our next contagion, because we know that something will blow up at some point in crypto is that we're going to get stablecoin legislation. We're going to see a thousand stable coins launch. They're going to cannibalize each other. Half of them are going to depeg and that's going to be our next issue.
Dave
Yeah, I don't think that the de pegging. Well, I don't think any of the new ones will depeg because I think they're all going to be fully backed. The only thing that could cause a de peg is, and it's curious, it's the fact that they're going to allow bank deposits and then you have to worry about is there going to be a bank contagion? Because if you think about.
Scott Melker
That's right, Deposits fractionalized, the biggest risk will be the actual banking system. Right.
Dave
So before I say anything, Alex, you put your hand up. I was kind of hoping.
Scott Melker
Yeah.
Alex
I'm curious on why, Scott, you think that we'll get a thousand scalable coins that actually cannibalize each other. When I think people are going to stick to the top couple ones for the liquidity and the trust, I think.
Scott Melker
Well, I, I just from conversations I had, there's not a single person I could find that didn't have some sort of plan to launch some sort of stable coin. When we get clarity, clarity, like I think every single bank will launch private stable coins and it will be basically the banking system on, on steroids. Right. And so like, if you believe that there's an issue with, you know, fractionalized banking and you saw what happened with Silver, you know, Silicon Valley, then you have to worry that all of these banks are going to be able to sort of supercharge that. Right. And so think about every bank in the world launching their own stablecoin trying to A make money and B like you know, hyper grow their deposits and the speed at which everything moves that could end up being a negative. There's a lot of people who are worried about this the proliferation of stable coins if it's not just the main ones like you said and obviously it's a, there's a path there to cbdc but that's a whole other sort of conspiracy theory.
Dave
Well my conspiracy theory which I think is a real one is that the, that, that, that JP Morgan Chase, Citi bank of America and who my Wells Fargo all basically issue their own stablecoin and then they say okay, we're going to allow interoperability, we'll allow free transfers among our four and put that underneath Zelle and try to tell people that no other stablecoin could participate and so continue to backing stuff as a closed system. That's what they're going to try to do. It will fail, it will fail miserably unless they manage to keep they managed to work the lobby is because what will happen is that the functionality, why people use those money centered banks so much by payment systems, et cetera will all get replicated in, in all the other firms that are now capable of doing the same thing without with, without having to worry about Swift or any of the other crap that's going on. And all those other firms will issue will have savings accounts that won't be stable coins. It'll be money market funds that'll be tokenized, that will be instantaneously available when you don't need to use your stablecoin. Well and so then that'll be a big difference and that's what how it's going to go down. We'll see how who wins but we'll say it.
Alex
Yeah, I mean I'm, I'm with you there. Like a, a private stablecoin network between the big banks in the US is absolutely zero difference in functionality from where we are today with that. Right. They're still going to have all kinds of limits on it because they, because of the risk management side which they're not going to give up. I can already transfer the amount of money that they are comfortable having me instantly transfer today. And so if, if it can't go internationally. Right. If it doesn't interoperate to everything else, it's not deployed on other services, it's not really any different. Which is why I think I'm sure They will try and push it and do it because like they're financial institutions, they want to make money but I don't see it doing particularly well. I think the one thing that does potentially get interesting if the market opens up is it create. It puts, definitely puts I think a pressure on Tether in particular and USDC to a lesser degree of having to start pay paying interest on at least some of it because someone's going to come out and start to eat away at that margin. They can't, they can't keep getting a free 4% on all deposits without someone.
Scott Melker
Saying, but right now, let's just. Right now there's not, there's almost no legislators that want to allow yield on stable coins. That's been kind of a battle between the industry and legislation. Sort of alludes to the fact that we might not get the exact legislation we need or. That's very forward thinking.
Alex
Yeah, I think someone will find a way to backdoor it one way or another.
Dave
Right. So put yourself in Coinbase's shoes or Kraken shoes or Revolut shoes and it doesn't really matter. I mean any fintech oriented bank is going to offer, is going to offer services to people where they can use stablecoins for payments and have a tokenized because it'll be easy and quick. You know, money market fund that provides real interest. Right now that's going to become an offering. I mean the notion that $5 trillion in, in today's checking deposits is needed from the banks. Yeah, okay, I understand why they feel they need it as they make money, but why do people keep that money there? Well, because right now it is a pain in the ass to move money and it doesn't necessarily clear it could take the bank and hold it. You made the important point you said, Alex, is the amount of money they're comfortable with. Well, people hold money in checking accounts because. Specifically because there are no facilities to, you know, have it in a. You know, banks still offer an enormous amounts of CDs or they force you to get below market interest rates but hold it for 12 months to get close to market. Right. You know, just think about that. Those are anachronisms that are not going to survive now. It will, there will be death rows for a while. It's not going to happen immediately, but those will not survive. And so people are thinking about the model. You know, the smart people are thinking about how to go upstream to the consumer and offer a better model. Because what person wouldn't say I'm better off Instead of using Citi or Wells or whatever and getting a blended average of less than a percent on their, their, their expenses for the next year and all of a sudden now they can get in today's environment, four, four and a half percent.
Alex
That's I, I disagree there. I don't think that's actually that big a difference from where we are now. Like most of the banks already make it pretty damn easy to move money into like a brokerage or money market account. Now they're playing a lot of games. The favorite one is, I want to say, is it Citi who the CFPB was going after? It wasn't City, it was another C bank. Or basically introducing a new savings account that paid a higher rate that people could go into while leaving the original people at a lower interest rate on it so that they didn't have to pay out for it. But the reason they were able to do that and that it was effective is because a lot of people don't care that much. And they're, you know, they have a bank, they know that it's safe, they like the services that they get from it and they just want a thing that like works and goes. I mean it's, you know, I use a couple large banks and I optimize somewhat, but I also leave more money than I probably than is quote unquote optimal in a savings account or in my checking out there just because it like makes my life easier on it relative to the larger like services and interactions with the financial service system that I care about. So I'm not sure that like just because there's more competition on it, there's already a lot of competition, a lot of options, a lot of neo banks and various things that people can do. And we stole, as you pointed out, have huge sums of money sitting in these super low yield accounts.
Dave
Right. Well, I mean, look, it is the larger conversation about what? About fractional reserve banking in general. Right. You know, fractional reserve banking was absolutely necessary as a companion to capital formation for capitalism. It just was. But why was it that way? It was because capital was local, you know, regional at best and information was very hard to transmit. So now we have global capital and global information at the touch of a button. And as AI continues to improve, it gets better, better, better. You'll end up with AI agents in a pure stable where, when you have stable coins, you know, underlying the system that can make these, these transfers and moves so easy that people won't even think about it. It's kind of like what can you do with Google Maps today versus what could you do? I'm old enough to remember when you had to buy a road atlas if you were taking a road trip. It really is that big of a difference. It's just, it's not going to happen tomorrow, but it is going to happen in the next few years. You're going to start to see it. That's sort of my thesis and you know, I'll probably expand this at some point. But what does this mean for crypto? Well, it means that projects that are really building, rails that are really building in these sectors have a real chance. I'm not saying all of them are going to win. In fact, very few of them are going to win. But the winner is going to be worth a lot of money. And I think that's, that's really the key.
Alex
Yeah, I definitely think that the, the, the end state that you're kind of going to there is basically the financial services AI agent that sits on top of everything else. And if you look at, again, if you look at like a lot of the Neobanks, especially on the business side like Brex and Mercury and stuff, none of them are actually banks themselves, but they're paying pretty damn good interest rates on a lot of these deposits by just being a software services layer that sits on top and moves your money around for you transparently. Right. You don't have to think about that. They give you really good interfaces, really good tooling for doing stuff and then they just go on the back end and figure out where is the highest yield still FDIC insured accounts that they can stick all the money in for you. So I definitely think that's what it ends up looking like more than an actual bank or an actual financial services company trying to optimize their yield.
Dave
Yeah, no, I think that's right. That said, you know, here we are in, you know, in crypto town hall and people are trying to figure out what's going to happen to, you know, their bags and the industry and where it is. And you know, we put in the title about bitcoin dominance. It seems like bitcoin's path is pretty clear. You know, I think there are a lot of people who are, you know, on the east side. I know, Scott, you think that Ether has bottomed and actually I think we lost Scott, probably whatever. But I know there are a lot of people who think that Ether has bottomed and I was just looking to see. Yeah, and that's going to be a major theme over the back half of this year, and I don't have a strong opinion about that. But the notion of alts season or what alts are is. I think I always hate it because it doesn't, it doesn't characterize what alts are. I mean, look, today everything crypto is doing well. Hell, Doge is back up over 18 cents. So, you know, I don't know what to make of any of this stuff, other than the fact that when Bitcoin starts to do well, and risk markets are doing well, and they all are today, that people will put back money into all of these things. So it'll be really interesting. I don't know if people have thoughts about what's happening. Sorry, I muted myself. Hey, Bruce. I noticed you requested to come up. Anything in particular we were talking about that you found interesting? I guess not. What about David? I see you unmuted.
David
Back for the Double Dave now. We're back for the Double Dave show?
Dave
Looks that way. Okay, cool.
David
As opposed to the four Ashley's, but we won't go there. Yeah. In terms of what's going on right now, yeah. Every bank coming out with their own stable coin. I could see them start bundling stuff with like meme tokens. JP Morgan will come out with their diamond. Meme token. I'm. I'm all for the diamond. Actually, I'd rather have the diamond than the trump. But, you know, that's just my opinion. You know, maybe we'll see people, if we don't get regulation in here, that someone will try to revive the algorithmic stablecoin experiment, much as we saw with the crash of Luna. But yeah, it's going to be interesting.
Alex
It's going to be interesting.
Dave
Well, you know, look, I've been a skeptic of algorithmic stable coins as a concept since basis. I think they're. That it's trash for a lot of reasons. Because effectively what you're doing is your. It's worse than selling volatility. Because effectively what you're doing is you're saying, okay, I'm going to create an asset that, you know, that people are going to put faith in. And as long as that asset retains people's faith, it's stable. And so effectively what you're doing in any algorithmic stablecoin is selling their tail risk. And that's what Luna was. And there's no way around it. I mean, that is literally the only way you can do it. The only alternative to that is massively over collateralizing an asset that has real value. So you want to Build a quote, algorithmic stablecoin that's backed by bitcoin. Yeah, I can see that working. But once again, you know, you have to understand there's, there's ways of doing it in ways not. But you know, those sorts of models. I think the one thing that we know is that people that the regulators don't want them to be called stablecoins, they'll let them be called something else and they'll be like a stable coin. They'll be a fund. Right. And you can have fun with risk characteristics and that sort of thing. So I think that's what the direction will be going in.
David
Can we call them your mama's stablecoin?
Dave
We call them, call them whatever you want. I just think they don't, they don't want the word stablecoin. I mean, I know it's ridiculous, but you have no idea how much literal political infighting happened over the term money market fund and regulation of money market funds. You know, in 2008 that was a huge deal when money market funds, funds broke their dollar peg. And not by a lot, but it was a huge deal because the, the expectation of people were if you have your money in a money market fund, it can't go below. You can't lose your principal.
David
Yep.
Dave
So I mean, Mark, you know, looks Mark, Mark dropped again. So let's see. Let's get him back. Okay. I'm not the only. The point is I'm not the only old guy on this panel. So Mark, you remember that, right?
Mark
Yeah, yeah. I was at, I was at a hedge fund and we had cash at Morgan Stanley and then had to put it all into T bills because we got really smart on what was property and what was not. But it didn't matter because, you know, Morgan wouldn't give us our T bills back. They didn't know where they were after. True story. After Lehman failed. But, but you're right. Everything at the front end at, you know, T0T1 demand deposits, that stuff gets real tribal as far as language and possession. You know, it's collateral for some people. So I agree. Do you back to Ethereum and you know, people's wondering where it's going to be. Is there a threat to its position as a stablecoin carrier given what XRP is trying to do with Circle and that. Because I think that that would be a real blow if somehow they were more viable alternatives to ride rails and Ethereum.
Dave
Well, I'm no expert there. I actually just invited William who I know has strong opinions on this subject, I mean. William, you want to answer that one?
William
Sorry, I was trying to respond. Can you repeat the question about comparing XRP to Ethereum? Is that it?
Mark
Effectively, I guess I did. What I said is the competition for stablecoins about whose rails. Because I know currently the Genius act states that they have to be a public blockchain in order to be approved, I guess to have treasury backed. If that's the case, and Ethereum is a front runner among, you know, the top three, I imagine. Is there a chance that Ethereum loses that because of their current status, the success of Layer twos, the way fees are being done and the threat from xrp?
William
No, I don't think so. I mean again, when people think about Ethereum, it's really about the whole Ethereum ecosystem. L1 and L2 is included. I don't know why some people want to single out L1 specifically. Both are improving at the same time, at the same speed. There was a bit of kind of giving back to the L2s momentarily, but this was a temporary thing. I think Ethereum is very well positioned at this point. It has the largest market shares. I don't want to repeat it, but it's obvious when you look at the numbers, whether it's stable coins or real world assets or defi the activity and the volumes are all on Ethereum. And I said something a few minutes ago. If Bitcoin today is at 3 trillion, I am not kidding and saying that ethereum should be 1 trillion because Ethereum is delivering on many of the promises, whether they are philosophical or realistic promises that Bitcoin is making. A lot of the activity is on Ethereum. It is vastly undervalued. David. I agree.
Alex
I'm actually curious, William, you had mentioned this temporary giving up of value to the L2s.
Dave
How was that temporary?
Scott Melker
The L2s have exploded and I've personally felt a negative UX consequence of the.
Alex
L2s with users getting confused.
Scott Melker
Where are their tokens, where are their funds staked? People getting sent assets on the wrong chain?
Alex
How do you see that unwinding?
Scott Melker
And when you say temporary, do you mean that we will now revert back to using the L1 primarily? Because unless you revert back primarily, it's not temporary.
William
No, no, it's an evolution. There are lots of applications on L2s and there are lots of applications on L1s on the L1 specifically. So they all keep advancing and they all keep growing. If you take base for example, it doesn't have a token. Some others have A token we should focus more on the activity and the underlying significance of what is happening and not say, well this is happening on arbitrum or optimism going down further in the next few months or years. A user doesn't care really what the underlying infrastructure is. What they care about is what they are seeing and the value that they are getting by interacting with a blockchain. And I think you're going to see more and more a melding of L1 and L2, especially that there are interoperability standards that are going to be prevalent. They are talking now about a common address system that will cut across this layering. So it's all going, it's all advancing in the right direction.
Dave
So you know, from a trading perspective and we see a bunch of people. Hold on a minute, sorry. From a trading perspective. Yeah, Mark, you had dropped, I just had to get you back up again. I'm sure you, you had a follow up.
Mark
So yeah, thanks Dave and Williams, thank you for that. You know, I haven't followed it as closely since the Denkin upgrade. Been focusing more on Bitcoin but, and I guess I've been not lazy, but focusing on the reason I distanced myself from Ethereum and it does have a tremendous interoperability and what they do with the upgrades is undeniably constructive for the space in general scaling. But how do you or others address the fact that when the hack happened, the Ethereum hack a few months ago, that it was entertained and even possible to roll back the chain? So just from a decentralization standpoint, is that something that should be dismissed because it's unlikely to happen from a control standpoint or how would you look at that, you know, existential.
Alex
Let me jump in there because I, I am by no means a particular Ethereum fan. There was zero credible or real discussion about that happening. That was like random people on the Internet. I think you could even say to a degree false flag from people trying to undermine confidence in Ethereum by implying it's literally not even possible for it to happen. And nobody at all serious was suggesting a rollback.
Mark
Okay, yeah, I, I, well thanks for that clarification. And it is not possible to roll it back or it's just highly improbable to have a consensus to do that. So I, I don't know if you know, others have an idea, right?
William
I mean this, this, there was a lot of analysis about what happened and you can't deny that a part of that was the human error. So you can't call on whoever to just Fix that. Unfortunately.
Unknown
Yeah, I would jump a little bit on this, on the human error as let's say Ethereum is 10 years old and a lot of crypto is getting old and old and this kind of security issues shouldn't exist anymore. For a company with all kinds of DevOps and everything, you should have all kinds of supports, automatic support for actually seeing what you are signing and not blindly trusting the microservice, which gives you. And this is one of the big issues. There were a lot of critical points and all those points added arrived into this kind of super critical vulnerability and it is still there. So you still have blindsigning, you still have to trust the microservice to do it. You don't have a transaction manifest created by your device. I think yesterday Ledger has announced that they are, they built into their new ledger system, transaction validator manifest, which runs on a ledger system outside of the microservice, which is giving you the information. That's cool, but that's again, it's only one wallet. I think that right now Ethereum is still stuck in the same place it was like a few years ago. And these kinds of hacks, if Bybit is hacked with all the security teams around him, it is super easy for anybody to get hacked as well.
Dave
Let's be careful here because from what I've read, I'll be curious. The Bybit hack was, was real human error. You know, it, it's, there is a lot, I mean, there are a lot of things, I mean, that are going on and it's not just in crypto, it's in the traditional financial system too. Right. You know, there are phishing attacks every single day. Newer, better, more, you know, it's effectively, you know, the, if you're, if you do not have good cyber hygiene, your. Now the good news is there are firms working on AI defense against this sort of stuff, right. To put into their systems. And so you're going to see, but you're basically seeing an arms race between cyber crimes and firms which rely on humans doing things, as opposed to just, you have a wallet, it's sitting there and you're not touching it. And so when you talk about a hack, it always amazes me because I talk with a lot of normies and effectively the first thing that they say is, well, if I'm not touching anything, can someone figure out a way to steal it? And the answer to that is generally no. It's when you start doing stuff that matters. So you're making a transfer, you're using A cross chain bridge, you're validating transactions, you're agreeing to sign a transaction, that sort of thing. So I think it's really important to understand what you're talking about. I don't extrapolate from if Bybit could be hacked, anyone could be hacked. I think if we had someone from Coinbase here or Kraken or Held, probably Binance, they'd say no, that's absolutely not true for a variety of reasons. In fact, I've heard them say that. So I do think that matters.
Unknown
Yes, Robert, what I wanted to say is that, yeah, it is an actual human error, but in order to limit those kinds of errors, you can design systems better from wallets, from everything from, from bottom up. Because as crypto and in a cyberpunk era where we are speaking about to people that you own your real money only if you have on a wallet, on Bitcoin, on Ethereum, on a layer one, on a decentralized network. And we are saying that this wire having this kind of hacks and this kind of super easy to fall into, this kind of traps, these two things don't work together really well. And yeah, it was a hack on the Bybit, in case of the Bybit Bybit team, it was an error. But they, daily, there are daily, people are getting drained daily and people are signing hundreds, thousands of transactions blindly by trusting not a chain, not their wallet, but what a website is giving them to, because that's how the system is built up right now. So what I, I'm just a little bit arguing that after 10 years of, or 15 years of crypto and with all the security firms, with all the minds here, you need to create a system in which safety for the users is by design at all levels. And that's possible. That's, that's the only thing I'm arguing here.
Dave
Oh, I don't think that's much of an argument. I think you're right and I think there are like, I know, like I'm actually talking to somebody about this. You know, there are firms who are literally trying to do exactly that. So, you know, I guess, you know, stay tuned is the sort of answer. But to go back to Scott's point from Token, it's like, you know, if that's, if you have a project and what you're trying to build is that, and you know, you're, if, if you succeed, it will be very successful I think is kind of the point.
Scott Melker
Right.
Dave
So, you know, here we are, it's almost 10 after 11 on a Friday afternoon. Or Friday, you know, for those of you who are over in Europe or further, you know, in the morning here, you know, markets. I don't know if anyone's been watching but you know, bitcoin is sort of caught up to gold and the other risk markets today everything's up like 1% now. It didn't start that way, but here we are. You know, correlations kind of go, you know, as you get toward the weekend, they tend to get a little bit, you know, a little bit tighter. Anybody have any final thoughts about what they think, they expect anything over the weekend or are we just basically going to be doing the same thing? You know, are we going to have. If markets hold here, I think it'll be the longest winning streak for the, you know, for the S and P, at least for a long time. Which is kind of amusing if you think of where we were two, you know, two days ago or two weeks ago. Excuse me. Yes, David.
David
Yeah, I would just say that we're going to get more news coming out about price increases. I think obviously the run up into the Fed meeting coming up next is certainly going to be unfavorable. Didn't really see anything in today's jobs report that would scream out for anything along the lines of a interest rate cut. So don't expect to see any moves from the Fed and just more news about higher prices. And I would argue, you know, we're going to see lower stocks in May.
Dave
You know it's, it's funny Joe is giving the thumbs down and I would happily invite you up to say it. In fact Joe, if you feel like coming up, you can, I'll let you defend it. All I would say is markets climb a wall of worry. And my point would be that it seems like most of the worrying has been overblown. So you know, I guess we'll see. I will say one nugget from the jobs report. I haven't earned it myself but Zero Hedge mentioned it is extremely important politically and people will always underestimate this. If it is true that over the last quarter that the job growth has been refocused on that you've seen non native born jobs in America go down while native born Americans jobs going up. If that is in fact true, and it looked like that was statistically significant from what Zero Hedge posted, that is a massive important political point. So everyone who thinks that the midterms are dead if we have a recession, blah blah, blah and talking about all this stuff, if in fact the economy is being re engineered as, as they are trying to towards voters that is not small. And just watch that trend. If that continues for the next nine months, I think that your people's sense of opinion polls that come that are dominated by the coasts will be wrong again.
David
One last thing I'll say is that I'm looking forward to having Mark Carney visit the White House and basically for all those Canadian hockey fans out there, basically give Donnie a big headbutt.
Dave
Yeah, we'll. We'll see. I think that from Canada is probably. Well, I'm gonna save this one. But I think that because I, I lived in England for a bunch of years and I know enough about where he's coming from.
Gary
Canada, Canada loses this trade. Awesome.
Dave
Okay, thank you. Anyway, Joe, you jumped up. I want to give you the airtime on for the bullish case for markets in general.
Joe
Yeah, thanks, Dave. Look, I don't know how many times we have to go through this cycle, but rate cuts would probably be more bearish for the markets. The Fed came out and said in May here that we need to cut rates because growth is slowing. The folks that are following that will perceive that as a bearish reaction. This has been the common thread for the last several years and I put a couple tweet threads about this. The guys who have gotten this wrong in the macro sense have been focused overtly on the Fed. And the Fed is really taking a backseat to the era of fiscal dominance. We're still running structural deficits that are equivalent of wartime deficits. 6 to 7% deficit to GDP. Please explain to me how a 25 or 50 basis point cut amounts to anything. So folks that are like, oh well, the Fed's not going to cut, they're going to hold. Pat. There is research out University of Pennsylvania, several other reputable institutions that have said that the higher rates are actually stimulative because there's huge amounts of people sitting on a lot of short term paper and they're getting money from the government, doled out the entire boomer generation who's loaded up in T bills and short term fixed income, that's stimulative. So the folks that keep saying, oh, the Fed's not gonna come to help, and that's really bearish. And the run up to the fomc, they're out of the game. I mean, in an era of fiscal dominance, their effects are muted. And this is what people keep getting wrong. They keep looking for rate cuts to trigger some bull market when arguably the cuts are gonna be negative for markets. Look what happened to the Ten year. When they started cutting last year, last summer when they did the first cuts, the 10 year, the yield started to rise, which was not bullish for asset prices. Now, there was a Trump trade on that ran up in anticipation of the election. But to me, I still don't understand the overt focus on the Federal Reserve when you're running these types of deficits. It makes no sense just based on pure math.
Dave
Mark?
Mark
Yeah, quick one. I know you want to wrap up here, Dave. Joe, everything you said is accurate about the fiscal dominance. Great point to bring up. And how it's not about the price of money, it's about the supply of money. And that when they keep it high, they're actually pumping more money into the system after 15 years low rates. All that's true. I think the Fed has a backdoor to supply of money also, though, from working with the FDIC to do the SLR so that treasuries can be purchased. So I think that there's drip, they're leaking or breaking boundaries into the fiscal side as well by fostering higher supply.
Joe
Well, look, can we talk about that for a second, just for Mark? It's a great point. Okay, so if this SLR exemption just to make. You got to make things real simple for people because it can get kind of wonky, right? The SLR exemption, if that goes through, what that's going to mean is that every single bank in the United States is incentivized to hold more Treasuries. And by incentivizing them to hold more Treasuries, that is not bearish.
Dave
Right?
Joe
That's very bullish. That provides more liquidity to the marketplace. And the reason is because right now treasuries are counted in what's called the supplemental leverage ratio. Basically what you're talking about is that there's a disincentive for holding a certain amount of Treasuries. They're going to remove that, and that will not be counted against their leverage ratio. And once you do that, that is a positive liquidity catalyst for markets. What it does in the practical sense is not just on the fiscal side of the federal government, on the banking side, it makes it more. It makes it easier for them because their leverage ratio is really what they're focused on. It makes it easier for them to lend and provide credit to the marketplace, which is bullish. That's a positive liquidity catalyst for the real economy.
Dave
Yeah, I've been making the point. Sorry.
Mark
Oh, yeah, no, go ahead, Mark. Absolutely. Absolutely true, Joe. And it's fun having a. I don't know if you were a litigator, but you know, a person with a legal mind delving into the byzantine financial fiscal side. So thanks for the clarity.
Scott Melker
Yeah.
Dave
I mean, the one point I've made repeatedly on our Macro Monday call with James and Mike and Scott is that everyone focuses in markets, I think wrongly, on the rate setting part of the fomc, and they ignore what's going on on the fiscal side. And that to me is the bigger answer, the bigger question. And we've seen it. There was this thesis earlier this year that Doge was going to come in and make so many fiscal cuts that we were going to restore fiscal sanity. I can't possibly express enough derision to how that could happen. You know, it's just nuts. Now, are they. Is Doge doing really important work? Yes. I mean, there are some pretty good interviews over the last couple days of what they're finding, but it doesn't change the fact that our Congress refuses to address the spending side of the situation. You know, and that's just fact. I mean, I wish that wasn't the case, but it is. And as long as we're running here, what does that mean? Well, it means if we have a recession or if we even even close to a recession and tax receipts are smaller, that our deficits are going up. And what does that mean? Well, that means more money is going to have to be pumped into the system. It's just, it's as simple as that. Disagree, Joe?
Joe
No, I think that's true. But again, there's like you can't stare at any one thing in a complex and dynamic system. So you're exactly right. Like, we go into a recession, there's automatic stabilizers, they're going to blow out the deficit and the revenue side goes down, however, Right. Growth is collapsing in that environment. So that's not bullish. This is like if the Fed comes out tomorrow, says we're cutting rates to zero and half the country's unemployed. Yes. Over the long run, markets are going to come back and they're going to come roaring back and they're going to do more stimulus. But there's that trough in between where people take a 50, 60% decline. So that's not bullish. The best thing for markets right here in my mind is you continue with these massive fiscal deficits and you have the rates remain stable. You don't cut because there's no real reason to cut. And again, think about the inflation argument, right? The Fed will tell you they can't model these tariffs and the effects that can have on inflation. And they have told you they're going to remain pat, they're going to remain stable because they want to see how the data is going to react. I was in Chicago in the same room with Jerome Powell and he was speaking to the Chicago Economic Club and he was saying this, exactly this exact point. He's like, listen, nobody can model this. Nobody knows how it's going to take effect. I don't think the administration even knows what their policies are going to be. So why would we be cutting rates? What is, tell me the explanation. With 4.2% unemployment and with, you know, generally a strong consumer, why are we cutting rates?
Dave
And I think the market. Yeah, I mean that's been my base case as well. So I guess we'll see. I mean there's 7% of the people think they're cutting next week or whenever it is. I think they're wrong, frankly. I'd be really surprised to see anything on the rate side. The only thing I really think they want is they want to try to figure out a way to get the ten year below four and probably towards three and a half. I think that's what they want and we'll see if they can get there. But I don't think it's going to be by. I think you're right. Cutting short term rates is not likely to achieve that. It's probably the opposite.
Joe
The easiest way to get the 10 year down is to bring inflation down. I mean honestly, that's that when you're buying a 10 year, there's, you're forecasting growth. Fiscal deficits and inflation, those are all factors. Right. So what's the easiest of those to take care of? It's not fiscal deficits unless you're going to touch Social Security, Medicare interest and you know, military spending, which they're not going to do. You have to bring inflation down and how do we bring inflation? Well, you know, that's not an easy thing to do in the short run. Yeah, it takes a long time of keeping rates, you know, elevated. And also you really got to deal with something on the housing front. I mean there's a, there's a shortage of housing in the country which is a serious problem for many regions.
Dave
Okay, Gary, then Zach.
Gary
Well, this inflation thing, I'm really struggling where this is coming from. We have a crude print at 5832 today, down 1% with gasoline at 202. And if we go back just two and a half years, gasoline prices were 265. That's where they. When is that? That's April 20th. Excuse me. July 24th. A year ago we're at 260. Now we're 2, 202. Now, I don't know how. Crude oil being off in the 50s, which I don't think anyone predicted, and gasoline being down 40 or 50 cents, that's wholesale. Where, where's the inflation coming from? Egg prices, food prices are coming down. I mean, okay, maybe you don't have as many T shirts from China to buy, but can someone explain where the, the inflation is coming from?
Dave
Well, I will say this. Mike McGlone, my friend, who I disagree with vehemently on Bitcoin, did get oil, right? He has been calling for that, but other than that, I think, I hate.
Gary
To be that guy, but I've been saying oil was gonna, you know, get into the 60s for years. Look, we have too much energy all over the world and now you have all the construct, all the, all the oligopolies have broken apart now. People are trying to place. They're trying to monetize their assets right now. Right? That's exactly what's happening. Everyone's trying to. I just don't see where the inflation's coming from that Joe may be worried about. Or maybe there's something I'm missing, but I don't see the inflation.
Dave
I don't think Joe's worried about it. He jumped down so he can't defend himself. I think his point is that it isn't there and that's part of the bull case anyway. Zach, you had jumped up first and then. Mark. Yeah, thanks. I mean, I got to run in.
Alex
A minute and apologies for changing the conversation. I just wanted to remark on a sort of breaking policy thing that the Genius act, which looks like the most likely version of a federal stablecoin bill to pass sometime this summer, had an update today that is sort of basically a ban on tether in the United States. It gives the occ, the US Banking regulator, the ability, if it doesn't like tether's management, if it thinks that there's illicit finance risk, if it doesn't like the disclosures, it's made to, as a foreign issuer, force all US exchanges to delist tether in three years after the bill is passed.
Scott Melker
So it seems like this is some.
Alex
Quite effective last minute lobbying by Circle, Coinbase and crypto.
Dave
I think we're gonna have to dig into that next week because we're getting close to wrapping. But that is interesting. So thank you, Zach. Mark.
Mark
Hey, thanks. Just getting back to Gary on the, on the inflation side. Yeah. Oil has been overlooked as a, as a big deflationary lever in the work I've done locally. Looking at CPI versus different regions and in Europe and the US shelter has been sticky on the way down. And I think operating a apartment, you know, multi unit complex has not gotten cheaper. So those rents are not coming down, rates aren't coming down. So there's no refi opportunity.
Gary
Totally agree.
Mark
And I think, well, who am I speaking to? I just remembered what business you guys.
Dave
Right.
Unknown
So.
Gary
No, this is Gary. No, I agree, I agree rents are or not going to go down. Now Grant will disagree. Grant will tell you rents have gone down.
Mark
Okay.
Gary
But I think rents go up from.
Mark
Here and then, and then the other part which is in our brains is that we look at CPI as, as the basket when rent is 50 to 70, well, 50 to 60% of someone's budget sometimes not, you know, it's not 30 like the CPI basket. So that's another, you know, reality about what's hitting people is it's a bigger part of their actual budget, not the Fed's perceived allocation.
Dave
Okay, well now we're 1123. There's any. No other final thoughts. I guess we can all, you know, think about enjoying the weekend, although some of us are on the east coast. But I'd like to thank you all. I think people should remember to follow all the speakers who are giving up all their time up here. And we will be back probably with Mr. Melker on Monday morning at 10:15 on Crypto Town Hall. So thank you very much everybody.
Mark
Thanks, Dave.
David
Have a great weekend.
Podcast Summary: The Wolf Of All Streets
Episode: Total Cap Hits $3.1T! BTC Dominance Still Climbing | Crypto Town Hall
Release Date: May 2, 2025
Host: Scott Melker
In this engaging episode of The Wolf Of All Streets, host Scott Melker moderates a dynamic Crypto Town Hall discussion, delving deep into the latest developments in the cryptocurrency landscape. With the total crypto market capitalization soaring to $3.1 trillion and Bitcoin's dominance on the rise, industry experts and enthusiasts gather to analyze market trends, regulatory shifts, and future projections.
[00:36] Scott Melker: Scott opens the discussion by recounting his recent attendance at Token 2049 in Dubai. He contrasts the vibrant, builder-centric atmosphere overseas with the more subdued, regulation-heavy conferences in the United States.
“It was like a funeral in the US and Coachella on the flip side.” [02:00]
Scott highlights a shift towards skepticism within the market, noting that while exuberance abroad remains, investors are now discerning between projects with real utility versus those driven purely by speculation.
The conversation transitions to Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy, focusing on his strategic approach to Bitcoin investing. Scott praises Saylor’s clear articulation of his long-term vision, emphasizing minimal leverage and a steadfast belief in Bitcoin's future.
[05:00] Dave:
“If you believe that, then it's, if that turns out… I will have a very, very comfortable retirement.” [07:22]
Dave supports Saylor’s strategy, discussing the robust models predicting Bitcoin’s growth and comparing it to traditional assets like gold. The panel debates the feasibility of Bitcoin reaching a $1 million valuation per coin, underscoring its potential as a superior store of value.
The experts explore Bitcoin's trajectory towards matching gold's market cap and its implications for the financial ecosystem. They discuss the competitive edge held by long-term bullish investors and the potential for Bitcoin to outpace traditional financial instruments.
“If you have good eyesight that his [Saylor's] strength of conviction is unmatched…” [10:00]
“Bitcoin is destined to at a minimum in 20, $25, reach the level that is effectively gold's market cap.” [12:23]
A significant portion of the discussion centers on the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation's (DTCC) announcement of a new platform for tokenized, real-time collateral management.
[17:43] Scott Melker:
“Nobody really understands what Bitcoin as pristine collateral will mean and what tokenized collateral can do in terms of velocity of transactions.” [18:47]
Dave elaborates on the potential impacts, expressing excitement about an upcoming panel with DTCC’s Robert to gain deeper insights. The panel acknowledges the transformative potential of tokenized collateral in traditional finance, anticipating widespread institutional adoption.
The panelists delve into the burgeoning stablecoin market, debating the sustainability and regulatory challenges posed by an influx of new stablecoins.
[20:56] Scott Melker:
“We're going to get stablecoin legislation… half of them are going to depeg and that's going to be our next issue.” [21:14]
Alex questions this outlook, positing that top stablecoins like Tether and USDC will maintain their peg due to full backing. Scott counters, suggesting that the regulatory environment may lead to fragmentation and increased risks, especially with fractionalized banking practices.
The discussion shifts to Ethereum's dominance as a stablecoin platform and the emerging competition from XRP. Panelists assess whether Ethereum can maintain its lead amidst improving Layer 2 solutions and the threat posed by XRP's initiatives.
[36:44] William:
“Ethereum is very well positioned… it is vastly undervalued.” [38:00]
The consensus leans towards Ethereum maintaining its stronghold, supported by its extensive ecosystem and ongoing advancements in scalability and interoperability.
The conversation explores how traditional banks might respond to the stablecoin surge, potentially launching proprietary stablecoins and the ensuing competition within the sector.
[22:53] Dave:
“They’re going to sell their own stablecoins and try to create a closed system, but it will fail unless they innovate beyond traditional models.” [24:07]
Alex and Gary agree, emphasizing that banks’ attempts to integrate stablecoins without interoperability will struggle against more versatile, market-driven alternatives.
As the episode progresses, the panelists reflect on current market sentiments, Bitcoin’s performance relative to gold, and potential movements heading into the weekend.
[49:05] Dave:
“Bitcoin is sort of caught up to gold and all the risk markets are up… correlations are getting tighter.” [49:05]
A substantial segment is dedicated to macroeconomic factors influencing the crypto market, particularly inflation trends, Federal Reserve policies, and the concept of fiscal dominance.
[57:00] Joe:
“Rate cuts would probably be more bearish for the markets… Fiscal deficits are still running high.” [54:29]
The panel debates the sources of current inflationary pressures, with Gary questioning traditional inflation metrics given declining oil and food prices, while others emphasize the ongoing fiscal deficits as a significant driver.
Alex brings attention to the latest legislative developments, specifically the Genius Act, which includes measures that could effectively ban Tether in the United States by mandating delisting from exchanges within three years.
[63:18]
“Genius act… ban on tether in the United States.”
Scott interprets this as a strategic move influenced by lobbying efforts from major crypto players seeking favorable regulatory outcomes.
As the town hall wraps up, the panelists offer final thoughts on the interplay between technological advancements, regulatory frameworks, and market dynamics shaping the future of cryptocurrencies. They express cautious optimism about Bitcoin's trajectory while acknowledging the challenges posed by increasing regulation and market competition.
[65:00] Dave:
“Enjoy your weekend and follow the speakers who are giving their time.” [65:26]
The episode concludes with a reminder of the next Crypto Town Hall session, promising continued in-depth discussions on the evolving crypto ecosystem.
Notable Quotes:
This episode provides a comprehensive exploration of the current state and future prospects of the cryptocurrency market, blending technical insights with strategic outlooks from seasoned experts. Whether you're a seasoned investor or new to the crypto space, the discussions offer valuable perspectives on navigating the evolving financial landscape.