← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:01]
Scott
The trade wars, to those who celebrate it is Friday morning Crypto Town Hall, 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Every single weekday here we are celebrating the strong markets that we've all come so accustomed to as the S and P and Nasdaq absolutely fall off a cliff and bitcoin stands steady. TOM I've never been so excited in my life to see bitcoin do absolutely nothing. As I would say I am today trading right now at 82,800. If you take a look, the bitcoin chart, every day has opened or closed between 82,300 and 82,900 for the past week. So in the midst of all this volatility, we've had big ups and downs in bitcoin. But at the end and beginning of the day, it effectively is flat, right in the middle of the 82 thousands as the world seemingly burns. Dave, what do you make of bitcoin? WEISBERGER well, we'll do both. Dave's I don't want to confuse it. What do you make of bitcoin's relative strength, as our colleague Mike McGlone would say, in the face of market turmoil?
- [01:19]
Dave Weisberger
Well, I mean, crypto in general has had a bigger sell off than is likely to be seen on Nasdaq even after Monday. And we do need to talk about this weekend and Monday. But I've been saying for a while, for three weeks now, that the sellers of bitcoin have been the marginal, the marginal crypto speculators and frankly, it feels like they're getting exhausted. You know, the people who have bought it are long term buyers. Now the real question is how much this weekend will be flooding into because the way things work, people should understand in the old world, when weekends are closed tend to be when a lot of people, dentists, et cetera, sit down and adjust their portfolios and they put in orders. If you look at stock market crashes, there's a reason that they've been on Mondays and the reason what they generally are after bad weeks the week before with gloomy news over the weekend, lots of orders flood in. You know, you remember I said yesterday that if yesterday holds and tomorrow today is down another 3%, then there's going to be a shit ton of panic going on on Wall street over the weekend. And it will depend on what they actually do. But understanding that apart from a massive panic selling, the marginal seller of bitcoin is exhausted. And frankly, the likelihood of things to try to offset this carnage is very positive for bitcoin. Remember, bitcoin was Born in the global financial crisis. Right. It is a opt out against this system and the people who are long it are looking for a 10X and not worrying about 5% here or there. So you have this incredible dichotomy and it seems to be playing out. We've been talking about this now for two and a half years, Scott. But it feels like this is a pretty important sign. And with all I'll say is this. If you think Eric Trump didn't know that his father was going to rattle markets and cause you know all of this crap then you're nuts. And you know, follow the smart money. That's, that's really the most important thing I would say. Or at least follow the most informed money. It's sort of like bitcoiners. We are the Nancy Pelosi's of this cycle. That's all I can say.
- [03:46]
Scott
You did not just call me Nancy Pelosi.
- [03:49]
Dave Weisberger
I just called you.
- [03:50]
Scott
You're Pelosi.
- [03:51]
Dave Weisberger
I called you a God level trader. You should be.
- [03:53]
Scott
Thank you. I was just gonna say, okay, whatever. I'm no Pelosi. Hey, I don't even know if I'm Pelosi in that terminology. That's hilarious. What's also interesting today we had job numbers that were relatively strong. So I can say at least maybe the trade wars have given us enough cover to not have to talk about nonsensical job numbers on a Friday. So that's a silver lining.
- [04:17]
Dave Weisberger
I mean if everyone should watch. Vicente gave an interview yesterday with CNN actually and he's a very calm delivery. But what he basically said is, listen, the economy that we've been celebrating in financial celebrating for years is. He calls it the steroid economy. What he's basically saying is it's drunk on debt. And effectively he sounded like a bitcoiner. Well then again we kind of know he is one. So that's not all that surprising, you know. So when you, you have the most powerful person in the administration on the economy telling you that the economic system has been financialized and drunk on debt and that they are going to do everything they can to try to build a more, more sustainable path forward, it's pretty hard to be bearish on bitcoin. Because that is exactly why. Because if you were bearish on bit now then you shouldn't, you should have never been bullish on it. And frankly I think all the people who are in it just for trading and speculation are getting the hell out. If they haven't gotten out already.
- [05:26]
Scott
I called on one David. So I have to call on the other David, your thoughts? David?
- [05:31]
David Tal
Oh, you're too kind. I'm certainly, I'm a lesser David than Dave Weisberger.
- [05:37]
Scott
You guys are equal.
- [05:38]
David Tal
David's I will say, I will say. No, no, it's a, first of all, it's a pleasure to, to join you today. You know, we had a space earlier this morning, Scott, that you were on. I think it was some of the most informative, knowledgeable, you know, thoughtful commentary. And I think, you know, I think on days like today, you know, to be kind of crowded around with good thinking people whether, you know, the divergent opinion is beside the point, it really helps kind of help, you know, inform you to, to, you know, gain, you know, a formed opinion of your own. And so, you know, I certainly believe with Dave Weisberger, as I have for a long time, about following the money and I, you know, whether this experiment works out or not, how much destruction occurs across the world with, with the experiment going on in terms of tariffs on shoring a bunch of activity that gets, you know, roboticized, digitized, done better in the United States, whatever it is, we don't have trade imbalances, we don't have reliance on other countries, whatever it may be. You know, one of the things that I just commented out loud about is I do believe that it may be, you know, bitcoin and crypto more generally's period of time to, you know, make its breakout. And I don't mean to sound, you know, prophetic in any way. Sometimes some of the things that are, you know, most clear and most rational need to come under incredible pressure from everything else, while everything else is getting beaten up for people to realize the value of something else. And I think, you know, I, I've said it before. I think 2024 was a great year in generally. So frankly, most investors didn't really take much of a gander at Crypto's outperformance. Not 2024, not 2023, but maybe, you know, these, this, this current situation.
- [08:01]
Dave Weisberger
This.
- [08:01]
David Tal
Current situate people to realize the value of bit, the value of bitcoin, certainly in terms of being the preeminent store value and more broadly, the revolution that crypto can go ahead and, you know, actualize, you know, overall. And I don't, again, I don't mean like a crazy person, but, you know, I think, I think we might have the recipe for that. Only time will tell if that happens.
- [08:37]
Alex
Alex?
- [08:39]
Fred
Yeah, I think the really interesting thing, especially over the last few days looking, it's not, I Wouldn't frame it as the over performance of bitcoin. And certainly the overall crypto market's not good, but it's the stability of it, as you were saying.
- [08:51]
Dave Weisberger
Right.
- [08:51]
Fred
Like, it's not just is it, you know, nice to not have it moving around, but the fact that it's diverged so hard from the Nasdaq and just tech stocks in general, where it's been so strongly correlated for so long and is and is holding steady there. I really agree with the sentiment. Like, if you weren't bullish on it before now, or if you were bullish on it before, it's a really, really weird time to be getting bearish on it right now because it's finally, you know, knock on wood, doing the thing that like we say it should be doing.
- [09:25]
Scott
Interestingly, everybody has their own definitions. I think we all agree that bitcoin is not in a bear market just because it went down more than 20%. But the traditional definition of a bear market, or, you know, a Correction is usually 10, 10% or more. Many view a crash, depending on how fast is 20% and if it gets into over 20% territory, certainly for stocks, a bear market, the Nasdaq is currently down 19.93% from its peak.
- [09:53]
Fred
Yeah, but so, and I think in terms of like, that you need to also just pull back a little bit. And it's not just like, look how much it's up in the last year. It's look at it where it was the day before for Trump's election and think about how frankly overinflated or speculative the move up to 100,000 plus was based on, oh, he'll make a strategic reserve and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. If you pull that out, like mid-80s, if you just price inconsistent performance and hedging against instability overall, like, it's probably about at the right point with, given where the moves have been for the last two years on it versus, you know, when it shot up 25 or 30%, like in a week because there was hopes that like Donald Trump would buy a bunch of it.
- [10:42]
Dave Weisberger
I think one thing that's worth talking about, Scott, from a macro point of view is if you look at the 2017 playbook, I mean, people forget that when Trump came in, it was, it was not quite as. I mean, he wasn't as much of a bull in the china shop as he is this time. I mean, this is a clear intentional attempt at resetting 30 some odd years of US policy. So this is bigger. So let's just get that out of the way. I'm not trying to minimize that. But the indicator that when I was asked early in 17 when the market was kind of selling off in the beginning was well, is this the real sell off? And the answer, and actually the same thing was true right at the election time. The answer in my mind was no, not as long as the bond market isn't selling off in tandem with the stock market. The world is not repudiating U.S. assets. Just keep that in mind. What you have here are panicked people who have been living off their wealth effect for a long time off their stocks, selling stocks and buying bonds. But the bond yield at 3.9 is in some respects, there are people in Washington doing backflips about that because it's what they want to see. So keep in mind we haven't seen repudiation of US Assets yet and that matters. So if you look, if people are buying bonds and then you have others who are looking, who listen to Michael Saylor and they're saying, wait a minute, why the hell am I buying bonds? I mean, why not buy Bitcoin? And it's a very interesting comparison when you look at it that way. But the economy in the US like the job numbers, everything else, there's so much crap going on with it. The issue is how much would a trade war really matter and what would really occur. The more concerning news this morning had nothing to do with China's tariffs. It was China putting export controls over rare earth minerals. That's the real political flex. I mean, people may not be paying attention, but believe me, that's what matters. That's what matters.
- [12:37]
Scott
I talked about that this morning. And we get 80% of our rare earths, by the way, from China. But more importantly, the little bit which is I think sub 1% because we get 10% somewhere else, 5%, maybe we have 2% comes out of California and 100% of that is refined in China. So even the rare earth that we have in the United States, we export to China to be refined before being sent back.
- [12:59]
Dave Weisberger
As I said many times over the last few weeks, I mean, there's a reason Trump is looking, they're trying to figure out shit with Greenland. There's a reason that what they're doing in Ukraine and Russia, and yes, I'm sure they do want the war to end and yada, yada, and I hate to be incredibly cynical, I'm just saying that rare earths are a very big part of that story and, and will continue to be. And that's part of this policy. So, you know, we, you know, if we're not ready to, to find other sources, you can pretty much bet that, that, that we're going to have to play ball and probably, you know, fold a little bit because it's too important for those who don't understand rare earths or effectively without them, you have no computers. You have no, forget renewable energy, you. You have no computers. So, you know, fighter jets, cars.
- [13:46]
Scott
Yeah, more than just computers. I mean, China clearly here did not capitulate or give in to what they see as a strong hand from, or we can maybe from the United States. There was a report two days ago, I believe, that said that United States and China are likely to come to the negotiating table after the tariffs. And it also stated that China unlikely to negotiate because they view United States position as weak and likely headed into recession. So I think that they showed very clearly, for better or for worse, that they're not afraid of this by raising tariffs 34% and then on rare earths. Go ahead, Lou. Mo, can you hear me?
- [14:36]
Lou
Yeah, sorry about that. Just needed to unmute like usual. I disagree with quite a bit a lot of what's been said. First, somebody earlier on called the tariffs an experiment. I don't think it's an experiment. We've done this multiple times. We know how this is going to work out. It's like saying that striking out in baseball is an experiment to see if it raises your batting average. We know that striking out will not raise your batting average, and we know that tariffs are going to shrink the economy. That is what they do. I also disagree with what Dave said about that. It's panicked people selling. This is a massive, massive market. It's not moved by some panicked individuals. These are the smartest people in the world out there making their bets and telling you that the economy is going to shrink. And I think coming back to the negotiating table for Trump is going to be tough because he's negotiated with people and signed agreements and then not honored the agreements. So, yeah, it's going to be tough to get people to come back to the table and trust anything that Trump does. And I think from a macro level, I think all of this, while it's unfortunate for the US and our economy, in the long run, it's great for bitcoin. I think this is going to speed up. We all knew at some point that there was going to be a great decoupling. And my guess is this can be the thing that really starts to drive the decoupling of bitcoin from the NASDAQ and the rest of the market.
- [16:11]
Matthew
Good morning everyone. I just wanted to add a different take I have on the tariffs. I think they're ultimately going to be good for two reasons. One is that the US is obviously the dominant global buyer of everything and the US has the global dominant reserve currency. So if you're threatening everybody that you're not going to be able to sell to the biggest market and you have the biggest currency, you're in the driver's seat. The only thing there is do you hold strong with the tariffs or do you fold and, you know, get rid of them early on? And I think that's what's going to be the big question here. Obviously everyone's thinking you got to wrap this up by the midterms, which, you know, I kind of agree with. But you know, if you go back, you're looking at the pain right now. Your average orthodontist isn't going to remember what happened in early April when the stock market's back up, you know, six, eight, nine months from now. And yeah, the corollary is okay, well, if the US Is going to do this, we got to start to decouple away from the reserve currency. But I mean, they've been trying that now for at least BRICS has been trying that now for the last three, four, five years and nobody else can agree on whose currency is going to be the reserve. Now if everybody moved to bitcoin or some other currency, that would be an issue. And I mean it'd be great for all the bitcoiners, but we're not there yet. So I think the US is in the driver's seat as long as they maintain the pressure.
- [17:36]
Scott
Larry Fink, by the way, thinks that Bitcoin could end up the global reserve currency, which he said this week in their annual letter, which was just that. That was maybe the most eye opening thing that's happened in our space in a very long time. That kind of went underreported, but he's gone full satoshi, which I find just absolutely incredible.
- [17:54]
David Tal
David Tal yeah, I take issue with the point about the orthodontist. Not that I am or am related to an orthodontist, to Dante, but I think this destruction in wealth and portfolios is certainly not going to get worked out in the next six to nine months. I think there's a real reordering that's going on right now. And I think first of all, these types of drops for those that have been through it and do it professionally yes, that's one thing I will be able to very easily sleep tonight, no problem. But there are, I'm sure if this persists and we get to Monday, and we should talk about Monday, Dave Weisberger, but you know, if we get to Monday, we get another round of this because it hasn't been capitulation, it hasn't been sloppy selling, it hasn't been sourced selling.
- [18:53]
Dave Weisberger
Right.
- [18:53]
David Tal
Very orderly. So, you know, if, if history is a guide, you know, we've still got to get to that point. I can tell you people are going to be shell shocked at the end of this because in really, in an unprecedented amount of time, coupled with the fact that this was self imposed, how we work ourselves out of this, I don't think is as easy as some people want to believe it could be. I think this is going to be a very, very messy process. Remember on that list of tariff people, you've got to speak to each one individually and somehow work out a deal. And oh, by the way, the President's already said we're not getting to deals anytime soon. You know, crazy.
- [19:43]
Scott
Just for the record, that's what he said. But then yesterday he gave an interview on Air Force One and said if a deal is good enough, they'll take it. And he's right.
- [19:49]
David Tal
If it's, if it's exceptional.
- [19:52]
Scott
Right. I think it's problematic actually how back and forth they've been on things like that.
- [19:57]
Dave Weisberger
Right.
- [19:57]
Scott
It's just creating more uncertainty.
- [19:59]
David Tal
Yeah, I, I think it's incredibly messy. And again, I, I go back to the one point, not that Israel matters, but Israel said before this all came down, we're going to zero. And by the way, they're still on the chart.
- [20:15]
Scott
They still got. We hit them with 17.
- [20:18]
David Tal
Exactly. So like this, this White House, what I think is clear, we have to be honest, they don't have a clear chain of command, order of process. You know how we're going to go ahead and get this done? They want it to get done, it will get done. But I don't think that it's going to be six to nine months from now that the orthodontist is going to feel okay again about his portfolio.
- [20:47]
Matthew
Just for the record, I was going to say dentist, but Dave W. Took that one from me, so I had.
- [20:53]
Scott
To go ortho, no problem.
- [20:56]
David Tal
Happy to spread the wealth or the losses, I should say in this case.
- [21:02]
Scott
There's also some nuance, which is that Trump campaigned largely, at least to Wall street and people with wide exposure to stocks on higher prices in the stock market and Bitcoin as well, assets in general being sort of the benchmark for how he judged the success of his presidency. And to some degree, I think this has been a pivot from that. So that's also, I think, caused quite a bit of confusion and head scratching. You have to give him all that's out the world for doing exactly what he said he would. But there's, I, I can just tell you anecdotally, because I have a lot of Wall street friends, they all think this is going a lot lower and they're all pissed off and they all voted for Trump. Yeah, they won't love them again, by the way. I'm just saying. And to, to your point, like, if you're going to do austerity, if you're going to do tariffs, if you're going to break things, you have to do it now. So that by 2026, when there's midterms, it's not a conversation anymore. But this isn't what a lot of people felt like they voted for. Not a value judgment.
- [22:03]
David Tal
Absolutely agree, Dave Weisberger.
- [22:07]
Dave Weisberger
I think they have two options to, for, you know, to, to stop the panic. There's only two, and you really have to game it out. What you just said is extremely important. Important, Scott, the thinking, it's going lower. When I talked about, you know, Pat, you know, selling, I'm talking about, you know, retail holdings, but I'm not, I'm not just talking about retail holders of stocks. What very few people understand and why 3 o'clock is very important and why the opens are really important, is there's still the vast majority of wealth, the vast majority of trading, 70% of trading is institutional. But those institutions face redemptions from retail people who pull their money out of mutual funds or pension administrators who say, wait a minute, should we really be this aggressive? And all of those boards are holding emergency meetings. You know that. And if you sat in the corridors of power in any sense, you know that the managing directors that are running every one of the Wall street firms and the people who are at the senior levels of every big investment institution are fielding phone calls from panicked investors and panicked people saying, what do we do? And that is where all this stuff resolves. So understand that this weekend will be, you know, you will have what has been colloquially called the President, you know, the Plunge Protection Team, the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which dissent chair or Besant chairs. He is going to have to come up with something. So they're going to have Two possible choices. I mean, I guess there's a third choice. Do nothing and let the market crash because Monday could be exceedingly ugly if this continues, given what is likely to happen over the weekend. So there's two choices. Choice one, they say, you know, that chart was stupid. You know, we want to, we will put 10% tariff. And okay, you can argue that that would be bad, but Wall street had more or less digested that. And we will have reciprocal tariffs in excess of that when people charge us more. But we're not going to try to equalize our trade deficit by a brute force, blunt force trauma hammer, which is basically, that's the whole Israel thing. They cut to zero and yet they're at 17% because we have a 34% trade deficit with them. Well, why do we have a trade deficit with Israel? Because they produce biotech and other shit that we import that we don't produce. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. And effectively they have to walk that back. Now, whether they'll walk it back or not. Well, that'll be a different question. That's a question internal to the White House is do they see this as enough of a panic to do that? If they do that, markets will explode. And I don't mean by a little bit, I mean they will explode. And that's the obvious smart move. Now, whether they'll do it or not, I don't know. The second thing they could do is rush or push to rush in liquidity measures. And that's been the playbook. But that is so antithetical to what this treasury secretary wants to do. I just don't see them doing it. So I guess, you know, that's really the question is will they walk back the nonsensical chart or not? It really becomes, it's almost that binary.
- [25:17]
Scott
Well, Dave, I will. And before, Alex, you jump in just to qualify because of the start of that statement, when I was speaking to my friends, we were together last weekend and they said they thought another easy 5 to 10% and that's already happened this week. So I can't say that they're all convinced that it's going much lower from here. Hilariously, the guy I always reference as my friend and I say can't say where he works, but rhymes with Citadel. He literally quit Citadel last week and he's texting me right now about his impeccable timing ass out of the market. Alex, I want you to go. But I also want you to touch on this question, which is we see that bitcoin Showing strength right now in the midst of all this, even if that just means sideways. But a lot of people pointing to what will happen Monday. Do we think that what bitcoin does this weekend is going to give us hints to what happens on Monday? Because to be fair, bitcoin often sees some of its worst price action on weekends when other markets are closed.
- [26:18]
Fred
Yeah, I think absolutely. Weekends, as we know, are huge for bitcoin and crypto in general and it tends to often not be. Well, the flip side to that point though, is that since everyone knows it, and I think again, because it is historically moved so much in line with tech stocks and the NASDAQ and things just, you know, basically higher beta on it every day that it doesn't. Right. That every day that it diverges and holds better and outperforms on sells the case a little bit more for it. That this might actually be the interesting differentiated point for it. I don't know how long it has to stay like that and hold it, but I think at some point it actually then really starts moving back against the market and, and continuing to increase because like it's, it's now doing the thing that it's supposed to be doing.
- [27:12]
Scott
Okay, so that leads to another question. Number one, again, to anyone on the panel, the question about the weekend. But number two, I think it's worth discussing why bitcoin is doing what it's doing right now when it hasn't necessarily done that in the. If anybody has any ideas of why it is holding so strong in the face of all this selling. I mean, like I said NASDAQ down 20%, pretty aggressive. Usually that would've meant a much bigger drop for bitcoin in the, in the midst of that panos then. Fred.
- [27:43]
H
Yeah, I mean, you think about it, Bitcoin's already dropped so much from what was the high? 109K. Yeah, so, I mean it's, I think bitcoin's already done a lot of, a lot of selling already. I do think it could go lower. And I think we're in this like, style mate right now where it's like flip a coin, 50, 50. Either it's going to go up or it's going to drop down into the 70s. But you know, I think it's not as, as affected as much as other markets because it has already literally been battered for the past. I don't know how long, like we saw it go into the 70s. It's bounced back up again. But I mean it's, it's probably a 50, 50 coin flip. Whether we're going to go back down into the 70s again or move up from here, in my opinion.
- [28:37]
Dave Weisberger
I think.
- [28:38]
Matthew
On, I. I have no idea what's going to happen this weekend, but I think on the second question, why is bitcoin holding? I think, what's going to be different? And I'm kind of coming around to this begrudgingly when I look at my crypto portfolio, but I think not everything is going to skyrocket this time, unlike all the other cycles we've had before. And so why isn't bitcoin getting hammered? It's because everybody that matters outside of the crypto world is starting to see what the utility is, why it serves a purpose, and that it's actually meaningful. And I say that and stress that because as it turns out, there's a crypto that everybody loves to hate. Unless you're in the army, that's been doing actually very well. Because whether you want to say a company has paid to get into Trump's circle or not, or because he's talking.
- [29:29]
Scott
About XRP guys.
- [29:32]
Matthew
You can't deny that that's done very well over the course of the last couple of months. And it's also hanging tough for what's been going on. And, you know, even. Not as well, but even Cardano's hanging in there. You know, you had a really good interview with Charles a couple of days ago, and there's actually a lot of utility there, even though everybody loves to hate it. So, you know, it's. I think we're gonna see a separation of the pack this cycle. And, you know, I just pulled up my portfolio and now I'm like, okay, well, I guess it's time, maybe time to sell my Kava Eos, Sand, Secret and Mana. I don't think those ones are going to hit this cycle.
- [30:11]
Scott
You're just not a true believer. And now you're going to get attacked by the passionate communities of whatever the hell those things are you just said.
- [30:19]
Matthew
I know.
- [30:20]
Scott
I'm sorry. I don't think you're wrong. There have been some, obviously, that have continued to outperform throughout, and I, I think everybody agrees that we're still going to get some nice bullish movement from a lot of altcoins throughout the rest of the cycle. My question then is, did Trump, like, put a 99% tariff on the Ethereum Foundation? Because holy shit, that is not performing well. Go ahead, David.
- [30:46]
David Tal
I am not going to comment about Ethereum or give explanation in there.
- [30:50]
Scott
Right before you spoke, the guy Ethereum to the balance sheet of company. I, I still believe by the way.
- [30:56]
David Tal
But yeah, no, but while we've been talking, I mean the NASDAQ's down now like five and a quarter percent on the day and Dow's down 4% on the day. S P down four and three quarters. This is a, you know, we've taken two legs lower you know, while we've been on chatting here. You know, I think who knows what the close brings but certainly unless there's some real policy statements out over the weekend, you know, my expectation is that this continues certainly into Monday. You know, whether Bitcoin can hold its ground. If, if history is guide right in terms of what it's done over the past. As you started this space with, you know, the, the range bound nature of it. I, I expect it to be there over the weekend. I, I don't think anything is going to go ahead and all of a sudden especially silence is going to go ahead and panic. You know, the, the, the bitcoin community that's held it at, in this range until now. I expect that we get there. But Monday certainly could be if again if there's no particular statements or negative statements, let's say from other countries saying we're, we're, we're going to double down just like China, you know, then, then I think we, you know, this, this is going to continue on Monday. And on top of that folks, you know, I got to go back to the, to the no panic selling yet and margin calls, you know, certainly starting to come out for folks. And yeah, we, we could very well see a flush. I'm not trying to go ahead and put fear into anybody. I'm just trying to, you know, think rationally about this.
- [32:36]
Dave Weisberger
So yeah, when you, when you talk about margin calls, let's be very specific. So here's the mechanics. I mean in bitcoin everyone likes to talk about seasonality and cycles. Here are the mechanics on the open which we've already seen. Orders are in, they're now getting executed and we're seeing, I mean the carnage is real. I mean NASDAQ down 5.79%. Gold down almost 2%. Just keep in mind that's why bitcoin is fall below 82,000, you know, because gold is down, you know, you know, 1.86%. And that, that's indicative of the famous aphorism in a panic people sell what they can sell, not what they want to sell. And so correlations go up that it makes what's actually happening even more Remarkable. But understand that this is panic. So it mechanically what you generally get is a price move from now, you know from the open to somewhere around lunchtime ish some quiescence the market will kind of hang out. Maybe it'll do something if there's no news by the way and then at 3 o'clock or thereabouts it's not exact science. You'll see that's when margin calls have to be met. So if there were a lot of margin calls today, you will see a for selling wave at 3. That by the way is why circuit breakers were put in. Because if you look at way the crash operated there were some gaps. But the big selling the thing that absolutely took the market completely and kneecapped it in October of 87. And keep in mind I was on the trading desk, I ran our program trading system so I know exactly what happened. There were no bidders after three when the margin calls came in. And that's why things accelerated so badly. Now that won't happen because it can't. They'll pause the market first but so you watch the post 3:00 then mechanically you get all the major decision makers over the weekend. And that's why the open and that's why the bitcoin it will be a leading indicator because people are going to know what the hell's going on. But when you talk about margin calls the time to watch is the last hour. Ish. It's actually before that. So really from 245 to 315 you'll know whether there's margin calls. And so just be watching that if you're you're trading today. It's exceedingly important.
- [34:56]
Scott
Quickly I pin this above in the nest but retail investors bought 4.78 billion in stocks yesterday, the highest amount in 10 years. So I can say that retail was confidently, well not necessarily confident but was definitely interested in buying the dip yesterday and then another one which it's not an emergency conference or anything but Fed chair Powell scheduled to speak today at 11:30am he's speaking at the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing's annual meeting meeting. But we all know that he's going to be asked questions about what's going on and what the Fed is likely to do it coming meeting. So I would expect eyes will be that at 11:30.
- [35:35]
David Tal
Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna host spaces that's gonna broadcast that for anybody that wants to go ahead and and listen in. And to your point on the retail, the orthodontist Obviously did not do very well between yesterday and today.
- [35:52]
Scott
Let's just hope they don't have any bitcoin to sell on the weekend when everything's closed, for sure. I hear orthodontists are huge, huge bitcoiners, very orange filled. Anyone else, thoughts on when this slows down? If we see a level of capitulation, if we think that the market will absorb this and head back up, or whether this is just the start? Dave, if we had Mike McGlone here, he'd be telling us over and over again, this is just the beginning. This is just starting to roll over. This is, you know, all the effort.
- [36:26]
Dave Weisberger
Where Mike and I agree is when you have the Treasury Secretary of the United States who's part of these policies telling you that our markets are on steroids and we need to take the debt out of the market. You know, if you look at the debt, the market cap to gdp, you understand that's very problematic. I mean, financialization has been going on. We're talking three, four decades of bipartisan policies that they're trying to unravel here. There's going to be a lot of broken eggs. There will be massive winners too. And so the question of where does it go? It's fine. I mean, Mike, every bit of the analysis that he does and where he and I disagree is everything he's looking at is backward looking, which, you know, look, I ran a quant, you know, quant desks for two decades and yes, backward looking makes a whole lot of sense. Unless the world is tell they're telling you what they're going to change and we don't know whether they'll cave or not. We don't. We have absolutely no idea. But you know, I think there are definitely pockets of things that are completely overvalued. I mean, still in crypto, I would agree. I mean, I think fart coin rallied again, you know, last night or something. It's like, okay, whatever. I mean, I want stuff like that to be zero for me to feel better about crypto. I'm not going to lie about it. But I think Mike's point is fair, that financial is a unwinding financialization and running the quote, steroids from the economy is going to be painful for some stocks. But, you know, I keep coming back to the Russell and you know, in the Russell's still down for a second day, down more than than the nasdaq. I got to believe there's, there's some opportunities in smaller cap stocks that are going to benefit. And I Think there's other ones that are going to be absolutely destroyed because of the supply chain issues that you've talked about. So you know, it's going to take a fair amount of analysis. But in days like today, when the markets are doing this or they would do yesterday, nobody's doing analysis, they're just fucking selling. And Dave, Oil.
- [38:23]
Scott
Yeah. If we're going to invoke Mike McGlone, who's not here, oil, 61 bucks a barrel, actually $60 and 90 cents down 9% on the day. He has been long calling. I think he's been calling for 45. But he said 60 many, many times.
- [38:37]
Dave Weisberger
Yep. Nope, he's been absolutely right on that one. And, and that's because, well, and if you look at silver, it's the same.
- [38:43]
Scott
He said that at one? Yeah, no, he did it at 120.
- [38:47]
Dave Weisberger
Yep. And he and I've never disagreed. I, I kind of think that at these levels you start to get a bit of panic and what will happen because we know this and it's funny that I'm referencing a TV show, but watch Billy Bob Thornton's speech in Landman because Taylor did great research. At this price, most of the productive capacity, most of the oil producing capacity is losing money and so they're going to start shutting wells and stuff. So if it actually, if this isn't a blip down, that this is a return to a price, especially given in current dollars and how much it costs, there's going to be a shit ton of oil, oil capacity taken offline. So drill baby, drill becomes.
- [39:28]
Scott
Huh.
- [39:29]
Dave Weisberger
Well, why will be the question. You know, it's not about, you know, about legal, it's about, about what price is. So price does matter. But don't, don't forget how important oil input prices are to inflation. Never forget that because tariffs even 100. And also never forget how the BLS calculates inflation. The BLS will do substitution. So except for things that we absolutely cannot have that we have no US alternative, they're going to smooth out the cost of tariffs. But the cost of oil, if oil is down this much, this is going to give the Fed much more room than people realize if it stays here. I doubt that it will, but it very well could.
- [40:11]
Scott
Just reading through the other stories in, in the news, this one caught me by surprise. Fred. You, you invoked the army. So I'll state this one. Coinbase Derivatives announced that it has submitted a self certification application to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and plan to launch XRP futures contracts on April 21. 20, 25. What do we make of that?
- [40:38]
Matthew
What you should make of it is that the powers that be have decided that when we go to the altcoin market, XRP is going to be one of the chosen ones. Now, you can have your opinions on whether that's the right way or the wrong way, but I think that's just the way it is, that everyone's making their moves, trying to get the favored status in the Trump administration that's pro crypto. And you're going to see that. I mean, I think you're going to see XRP is the next sole ETF that gets approved doing the derivatives on the futures market. One of the easiest ways to do it. And we're going to be off to the races once we get through this initial pain. I think once we get the stablecoin legislation, and now I'm starting to think we'll get actual structural legislation at some point at the end of this year. So it's all good news for the ones that are getting the additional help from the insiders. And you know, again, you can take it up with whether you think that's the right way or the wrong way to go, but that's just kind of the way it is. But I'm, it's, it's good for Fred.
- [41:45]
Scott
Yeah.
- [41:45]
Dave Weisberger
Well, I would be careful about one thing. Futures introductions has not been kind because it allows people to short. But I do tend to agree with you. I mean, I, I noticed a few, I don't even know, weeks ago, months ago, how if you look at your go your iPhone and look at your Yahoo Finance app and the only two cryptos it shows right off the, off the bat are Bitcoin and xrp. It doesn't even show Ethereum. So that just cracked me up when I saw that.
- [42:16]
Scott
I've also loved how in the past anytime you saw anything offered in the United States, it was always Bitcoin, Ethereum and then Bitcoin cash and Litecoin. For whatever reason, no matter what was being launched, those were included, no matter how little interest there was in them at that time. Fred, you obviously mentioned the stablecoin regulation there. Just sort of anecdotally I bailed on Crypto Town hall yesterday. Dave jumped in and hosted the rest of the spaces because I was interviewing Kirsten Gillibrand, senator from New York, obviously, who first proposed the Financial Responsibility Act, I think whatever exactly it's called in 2022 with Cynthia Lummis with a plan to legislate on crypto market structure. Stablecoin specifically, she's also the lead author with Hagerty on the Genius act coming out of the Senate for stablecoins. And as we reported this week, the Stable act came out of Congress and past committee and is going to the floor and her and I had a long discussion about that and she deeply, deeply believes that we will get stablecoin and to your point, market structure legislation this year. She thinks, and she's a Democrat from New York, Senator, but believes that this is the time that they can thread that needle, that it's politically popular, that there are tailwinds to do. So she said it's funny because I said, hey, what are the meaningful differences between the Genius act you're proposing out the Senate and the Stable act coming out of Congress? And why do we need two? And she basically said we don't. We're on the phone with them. We're trying to bring these together. They're not meaningfully different. So bottom line is this is a bipartisan effort to get this legislation passed and very, very, very high chance, it says here. I guess my only question would be what unintended consequences or pitfalls will be in there that we don't see yet. Because as excited as I am for legislation, I do have my doubts that anyone can't not criticism to them specifically, but that any politician can get that right with this agent, with this industry that moves so fast.
- [44:18]
Matthew
I would just say it's a why do you think that this is so bipartisan? And to kind of answer that, I would say that, you know, I heard you talk about it on your show earlier. I think your fear is, is the correct biggest fear, which is are they going to mess up the legislation like Europe did and are we not going to get yield on stable coins, that kind of thing. And it's valid because the banking lobby will be fighting to get their interest preserved. But going back to why it's so bipartisan is because the crypto lobby now has all the money to go toe to toe with the banking lobby. And so when you've got politicians who are going to get a ton of money from both sides, you know they're going to ultimately come to a conclusion. I think that's going to be, you know, a compromise, little upset here and there on both sides, but it's going to be totally workable and doable. So, you know, I'm really excited on that.
- [45:13]
Scott
Wondering if that can be the catalyst for a bit more excitement and bullish movement in the market. I have to say that I've been Surprised that things like a executive order on a strategic bitcoin reserve didn't end up moving the needle when we, I think consensus was that that would be the catalyst for a huge price run. I think it just shows how sort of beholden to macro bitcoin remains at the moment.
- [45:37]
Dave Weisberger
Can I be contrary for a second, Scott? What if it did?
- [45:39]
Scott
Please?
- [45:40]
Dave Weisberger
What if it.
- [45:40]
Scott
Yeah, what if we'd be at. What if we'd be at 65?
- [45:44]
Dave Weisberger
Is that your point right now? If bitcoin, if. Let's say Mike is right about one thing and I think he is right about this, that bitcoin and crypto do lead a little bit. What if the bitcoin community, seeing the tariffs and everything else and there was no strategic reserve and there wasn't all this, this constant buying interest in the bid, where would bitcoin have gone to? I think Tom Lee would have been right. It would have hit 60. So, you know, in my mind, that's fair. A 35% price preservation plus is a pretty important thing, especially for something that we know its most important impact is in the long term in how it will influence investment consultants and advisors to consider Bitcoin more of a strategic asset than just an alternative asset. Because that difference is trillions of dollars of investment. Not, not billions, trillions. That difference. And that, that is what that executive order starts. It started that, that avalanche. It just hasn't, you know, it's just the beginning. It's just a few pebbles right now. So I actually think it did make a big difference.
- [46:45]
Scott
Good point. That, That's a very good point. Listen, Mario, I know they have to host another space on his account in about five minutes, so we're going to move towards wrapping. But Matthew, you jumped up on stage. Actually haven't been able to hear your opinion as of yet and would love to know your thoughts on this kind of relative bitcoin strength quickly and what that means moving into the weekend.
- [47:04]
Alex
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I look at the markets from very much from a technical point of view. I do believe we've definitely got somewhat lower to go, but this is a corrective move down. You can look at all sorts of different currencies, but even the, you know, look at the S P, definitely corrective. So I do believe we're going to go to new all time highs, but we've still got some more pain to come with these tariffs. Trump will find a way. He's, you know, he's a master of changing his mind over things. He will find a way to, to Row back on what he's done. It's very damaging. It's a tax on Americans obviously that it's Americans that are going to pay more for everything, even for things that aren't and can't be manufactured in the US at the moment. So it's definitely going to cause some more pain and probably Monday is going to be more of a bloodbath. But as I say we have somewhat lower to go, quite a bit lower to go. But the line in the sand for bitcoin I believe is 69,000, the top of the previous bull market, 69K. And also if you look at it from Elliott Wave perspective, not everybody believes Elliot Wave but it's, you know, it's a good, good way to look at the market structure and I believe it's going to be defining whether we actually do head sharply down or whether we bounce from somewhere above 69. We can then go to new all time highs. I hope and believe we're not going to reach that 69k level and if that's the case it's going to rebound very, very quickly once we, I mean it's not far to go for bitcoin. Now someone mentioned before that XRP hasn't fallen much. It's actually fallen a lot more than bitcoin since the Trump inauguration. That's when things really started to go south. I think it's fallen somewhere around 40% bitcoin, what 20, 25%. So even XRP has stumbled hard. But yeah, I'm still very hopeful. I don't like to sell the market because it's extremely risky but I'm waiting to buy dips and the dips are not yet in. And you look at fear and greed right now. Fear and greed I just looked is at 28, nowhere near extreme fear. So there's still a long way to go down. So there's no form of capitulation. Bitcoin will play catch up to the downside. When I say play catch up, catch up with S P, nasdaq, the stocks, the indices. So it will play catch up to the downside probably next week. But as I say we've not got that much lower to go. I don't think as long as we stay above that 69 I'm positive and I think there's a really bright future ahead. If bitcoin rallies then no doubt the alts will as well. So I think even Solana is going to see a new all time high again in you know, within a matter of months. We're not talking a long time ahead of us. So that's my take on the market.
- [49:54]
Scott
Well, I'll take that positive take as a perfect place to wrap because they're kicking me in the butt and telling me to get out of here. We do have to run, guys. In the audience, everyone, please give everybody on stage a follow. They're amazing. They're here for a reason. And you can get their endless, amazing perspective, even when we're not recording here on spaces, by simply giving them a follow. Otherwise, Crypto Town hall will be back on Monday at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time right here. Have a wonderful weekend, everybody. Let's hope it's not yet another bloodbath.