Trade War Shockwaves Hit Crypto Markets #CryptoTownHall

Summary

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The Wolf Of All Streets

Episode: Trade War Shockwaves Hit Crypto Markets #CryptoTownHall

Host: Scott Melker
Date: January 20, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Scott Melker and a panel of expert guests dissect the impact of escalating trade war rhetoric—particularly involving the US, Europe, and Greenland—on the crypto markets. The conversation explores why Bitcoin has remained rangebound, the rotation of capital into precious metals, tokenization trends, and the fierce regulatory battles playing out in Washington, D.C. Notably, the discussion also delves into the ongoing struggle between banks, neobanks, and crypto companies over yield-bearing products and the future of financial infrastructure.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Current Market Sentiment: Trade War & Crypto Volatility

• The panel opens by referencing recent trade war tensions and how heightened political uncertainty is affecting Bitcoin and the broader crypto market.
• Scott Melker notes major cryptos have struggled:

  “Bitcoin right now at 90,148 looks likely to break down below 90,000 once again. ETH around 3,000 bucks. Solana... has been taking a beating because my algorithms keep buying it, which means it's been dipping larger than everything else.” (01:05)

2. Rangebound Bitcoin & Altcoin Weakness

• Dave (B):
  Highlights that Bitcoin is stuck in a predictable range, causing boredom and anxiety for traders:

  “Lots of panic when it was getting towards 84, 85 and lots of euphoria when it gets to 94, 95. Guess what? We're right in the middle of the range…. Reality is there's not a lot exciting in the bitcoin market. It's essentially stuck in a range.” (02:04)

• Altcoins suffer due to skepticism around adoption, especially with NYSE’s tokenization announcement likely being a permissioned system—not truly crypto-native.
• Panel agrees incumbents like NYSE are unlikely to use open blockchains unless regulation forces them.

3. Capital Rotation: Crypto to Precious Metals

• Maurizio (C):
  Discusses overlap of sophisticated Bitcoin and precious metals investors:

  “There’s a real overlap between some of the more sophisticated bitcoin investors and precious metal investors... these precious metals are moving like bitcoin should be moving… I think that’s drawing a lot of people away from other markets including bitcoin...” (06:32)

• Gold and silver hit new highs, siphoning liquidity out of crypto.

• Dave (B):
  Market participants who once drove altcoin speculation are now heavily trading contracts for differences in gold and silver:

  “A lot of the people who used to play altcoins, that's exactly where they are.” (09:09)

4. Adoption Curve & Investor Onboarding

• Stephen (E):
  Argues Bitcoin is having its “IPO moment,” with rapid adoption slowing as mainstream access (like ETFs) matures:

  “There's just not enough people to continue that accelerated pace, which means that the multiple goes down... So what I think bitcoin is finding right now is what is the true price...” (11:46)
  Predicts future BTC growth will align with global monetary expansion rather than hype cycles.

5. Tokenization & Which Crypto Assets Benefit

• NYSE’s announcement about tokenizing equities is seen as a watershed—but possibly irrelevant for public blockchains.
• Stephen (E):
  Tokens with deep integration in financialization (e.g., HBAR, XRP) are gaining the most institutional inflows despite poor general market sentiment:

  “Where I'm seeing the greatest number of inflows right now is HBAR and xrp. And they're the two groups that are doing the most on financial tokenization in my opinion.” (15:48)

6. Regulatory Battles: Stablecoin Yield, Market Structure Bill, and Bank Lobbying

• Perry Ann (F):
  Provides an insider update on the stalled crypto market structure bill, emphasizing bank lobbying as the main obstacle:

  “Banks had lobbied very, very hard to create a new provision in the bill... They decided that they would be against the bill if it did not ban crypto companies from offering yield on stablecoin deposits. I find this extremely egregious.” (23:13)

• Discussion reveals that large banks earn risk-free interest from the Fed (5.7%)—a subsidy funded by everyone else—while refusing to permit competition from stablecoin platforms.

• Dave (B):
  Puts the numbers in perspective:

  “The smallest number is $180 billion a year of a subsidy that the federal government is giving to the banks. But they're not. But it's actually way worse than that... it's a penalty that the savers are subsidizing bank and bank bonuses.” (26:28)

• The regulatory friction is about banks maintaining their control over yield, blocking both true stablecoin competition and open crypto banking models.

7. Role of Neobanks & the Future of Financial Platforms

• Debate over whether neobanks/crypto banks will successfully challenge legacy banking is lively:

  “Ten years from now, that’s all there will be. That’s my suspicion." (49:18, Dave)

• Perry Ann (F):
  Cautions that as long as regulators are protecting the traditional banking yield monopoly, even neobanks find it hard to truly compete.
• Maurizio (C):
  Points out that outside the US, neobanks that pay yield on stablecoin deposits are thriving—especially in emerging markets:

  “We pay up to 8% on that account… the adoption we’re seeing in emerging markets is pretty strong because the way we generate that yield is we lend those stable coins to our Bitcoin back loans… We are seeing more and more adoption around that model.” (53:09)

8. Broader Themes: Power, Policy, & What’s at Stake

• The fight is as much about entrenched power as product innovation; panelists express frustration at regulatory capture, but also hope that open crypto platforms and neobanks will win out in the long run.
• Perry Ann (F):

  “This really comes down to our fundamental rights to be able to use what we want, to exchange our goods and services with one another. We shouldn’t be beholden to one particular system.” (38:06)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It is important for people to understand... there are bulls who talk about this stuff... but there’s not a whole lot of money being committed to it from the crypto community. That to me is a really important distinction.”
  – Dave (B), (19:44)

• “Banks are earning 5.7% from interest on deposits at the Fed. You’re getting 0.1 to 0.5%. So what’s left? That’s the yield that goes to the bank.”
  – Perry Ann (F), (25:14)

• “The fight… that matters most is: will we have a future where all investments… are tokenized, and… all those investment options… are able to incorporate payments because stablecoins give you the ability to offer a payment… then what happens? The obvious answer is the $7 trillion that are sitting in bank deposits… can go elsewhere.”
  – Dave (B), (47:58)

• “If you don’t get debanked… this really comes down to our fundamental rights... If they take that from us, you’re taking a fundamental right which should be protected by the First Amendment because software is code and software is protected by free speech. We lose the First Amendment, what’s left?”
  – Perry Ann (F), (38:06)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:05] — Scott reviews current crypto market action.
• [02:04] — Dave explains rangebound Bitcoin and altcoin malaise.
• [06:32] — Capital rotation from crypto to precious metals.
• [11:46] — “IPO moment” for Bitcoin & retail adoption slowdown.
• [15:48] — Which cryptos gain from tokenization (HBAR, XRP).
• [23:13] — Perry Ann details Senate Banking Committee maneuvers and stablecoin yield fight.
• [26:28] — Dave: Federal subsidies for big banks vs savers.
• [38:06] — Perry Ann’s passionate defense of financial freedoms.
• [47:58] — Neobank model and its threat to legacy banks.
• [53:09] — Mauricio shares neobank adoption outside the US.

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Episode Tone & Style

The discussion is fast-paced, rational yet passionate, and heavily laced with institutional and regulatory insider’s insight. Speakers are candid about frustration with the political process and the defensive tactics of traditional banks. There’s an undercurrent of optimism for blockchain technology—and urgency in advocating for financial rights and innovation.

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Conclusion

This #CryptoTownHall episode underscores the historic moment crypto finds itself in: squeezed by macro uncertainty, challenged by competitive capital flows, and locked in a regulatory battle with banking giants. Yet, as the panel notes, the outcome will determine not just the next market trend, but the very architecture of the financial future.

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Transcript

[A]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to crypto Town hall every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Lot to talk about today. Obviously nothing greater than the trade war shock waves hitting crypto markets. If we believe that is what is happening, we'll obviously unpack that a bit. But talking about Trump's increased rhetoric about Greenland, threats of increased tariffs on our NATO allies, and the likely, apparently, according to some mainstream media, bazooka of responses that may be coming back from the European countries that we're threatening tariffs against. Before we do get that started, we have a sponsor today which is Zero G. I'm going to give you a little read about them. AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. But what if AI could run openly, verifiably and on chain? That's what Zero G is building the world's first decentralized AI operating system open to everyone. Imagine a network where you can, where you don't just trade tokens. You train, store and run independent AI models at scale. No lock ins, no black boxes, no single point of failure. Just quick, cost effective, auditable AI that anyone can build. If you believe the future of AI should be a public good, not another corporate monopoly, join us at 0g.AI that's the number. 0g a I check them out. All right, let's dive into it here. I think I gave the quick and dirty summary of what was going on there. Obviously, bitcoin has been under pressure. We're seeing renewed calls for 58, $60,000 on Bitcoin now that it, quote unquote, failed in the mid-90s. Bitcoin right now at 90,148 looks likely to break down below 90,000 once again. ETH around 3,000 bucks. Solana, I only know, has been taking a beating because my algorithms keep buying it, which means it's been dipping larger than everything else. But, Dave, how do we unpack? This is bitcoin, actually. And I wasn't here yesterday, obviously, or on macro Monday, so I kind of missed what was going on. But is this 5 bitcoin?

[B]

It's the same range. It hasn't changed. It was lots of panic when it was getting towards 84.85 and lots of euphoria when it gets to 94.95. Guess what? We're right in the middle of the range. I mean, it's like I'm reminded of the Simpsons and there are many great vignettes in the Simpsons, but I'm reminded of that, the one on soccer where they showed the American analyst sitting there saying, and he holds it, and he holds it and he holds it and he's like bored and ready to fall asleep. And the, the, you know, foreign announcer, I don't remember which nationality it was, was going, he holds it, he holds it, he holds it. I mean, you know, and you get, people get excited. I mean, the reality is there's not a lot exciting in the bitcoin market. It's, it's essentially stuck in a range. It has been, and it will break the range one side or another. But until then, I mean, you could talk about whatever you want, but it doesn't really matter a whole lot. Now, the rest of crypto, all coins, that's different. They are, it is pretty weak. There are some reasons that it makes sense for some of these things to at least be weak in the short run. And that is, it's, and that's quite straightforward. I mean, you know, we keep talking about altcoins as being driven based on potential value, but, you know, you see news, and, and I, and I'm putting news, air quotes around the news of the New York Stock Exchange doing going to 247 tokenized equities without any, anything talking about how they're going to do it, probably on a permission blockchain, probably nothing to do with any of the existing crypto. And that does take away from some people's belief in what the total addressable market for, for altcoins are. And so, yeah, I mean, you can see that being a little bit on a little bit of negative news that will drag on a lot of the altcoin markets. And in fact, we're seeing that straight up, you know, through up and down the chain, up and down, you know, coin market caps, top hundred. I mean, you see it all over the place. But I'm curious what the panel thinks about that, because to me, that is, I mean, to say that's unsurprising. I. What do, what do people think? Of course, incumbents are going to pick methods of using crypto that don't utilize, that don't allow for competition, such as decentralized finance does. I mean, of course they're not going to use open blockchains until the market forces them to because regulation allows it. So I'm curious what people think. But that to me is what is, what's happening? Curious. I mean, obviously a lot of other people, plus the other big question, we have Davos and, and I see Perry Ann is up here. So I'd love to get her take on it, given the food fight between Eleanor Terrett and Brian Armstrong. And by the way, Perry, and that was not on my bingo card for 2026.

[A]

I missed that. Was that yesterday?

[B]

Yeah, it was. You know, she had a quote about how the White House is not being constructive, and he came out and directly contradicted her, saying, well, the White House is being constructive. Whatever. I mean, you know, look, you know, the. Davos. To me, the last quote is my fate. One of my favorite books, arguably one of the best, most insightful books ever written. Davos to me. And having crypto people. There is this final scene from Animal House where people look from one to another and they go. They looked from man to animal and animal to man and couldn't tell the difference. I'm butchering the quote, but you get the idea. To me, if you're in the World Economic Forum, you're part of the techno. You're part of the technology of, of, of trust. And we're supposed to trust our betters as opposed to the technology of truth, which is why most of us are in bitcoin. But that's neither here nor there. Anyway, I, I do think that, that those are the things that are interesting. Anyway, I see Maurizio at his hand up.

[C]

Hey, guys. Yeah, well, just to comment on price action, I, I think back to. I think it was last Wednesday. We were here with Mike, Mike McGlone from Bloomberg. I think he was actually saying that until he was proven wrong, he was going to take a quick short at 95. So I think, Mike, I think you take this one for the time being.

[B]

Since he's been short since 15,000.

[C]

So, you know, well, like I say, broken, Broken clock is right twice. No, not, not to make it in a.

[B]

No, I think a lot of shorting at 94. All of us said, look, 94.95 made sense to short. Yeah, the trade, I don't think anyone really disagrees with that. It's been in a range and, you know, you, until proven otherwise, you short the range and met with a tight stop. Yeah, and that, that was fine.

[C]

Totally. And, and I just, I was, I, I remembered that the part of the conversation from last weekend, it just seems to be playing out, you know, pretty much rangebound like you said. And, and I don't disagree. I think a lot of it is just par for the course in terms of narrative. One thing that I've, that I've, that I've noticed and I bring this up to the panel for discussion because I speak with a lot of bitcoinerts that obviously, you know, work with us and take loans, et cetera, to buy more bitcoin or use our structured products. And there's a real overlap between some of the more sophisticated bitcoin investors and precious metal investors. And I think this is true across the board. If you look at some of the biggest voices in bitcoin outside of Peter Schiff, of course, a lot of them are gold bugs or silver bugs. And I think one of the things that's in some ways creating some attrition from bitcoin is this crazy positive narrative that's happening around precious metals. Because I hear more and more bitcoin investors basically actively positioning and moving between gold, silver and bitcoin. And again, look at the markets this morning. Gold another all time high, up 3%. Silver up another 4%. Another all time high. And this is, you know, these precious metals are very much moving like bitcoin, like bitcoin should be moving or with the volatility and price velocity that bitcoin should be having. And I think that's drawing a lot of people away from other markets, including bitcoin and even stable, like not stablecoins, sorry, altcoins into this precious metals rally. I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a precious metals expert, but I'll be curious to hear if anyone in the panel has any type of insight or sees something similar in the market where the amazing rally that we're seeing in precious metals is sort of stuck in the air of the room from some of their asset classes.

[B]

I don't want to be the only one to speak, but my theory, Maurizio, has been that the bitcoin rally will take place when we find a level that is more or less static and the momentum, excitement in silver in particular and gold decrease. I mean, I think, and historically bitcoin has followed silver is more interesting than gold in a sense. But I'm on record, I'm uber bullish on silver for the very specific reasons. I think that silver will go to at least the mid-30s. I mean, I was on with on macro Monday yesterday. I mean, Larry Lepard was saying he thinks it goes to where it is in the earth's crust, which is 20 to 1. Now keep in mind it's in the 50s now, so you could easily see almost a doubling of silver with gold at these prices without, without too much trouble. And there is an enormous amount of leverage trading that happens with silver and gold via the contract for differences markets and a Lot of the people who used to play altcoins, that's exactly where they are. And so, yeah, you know, there that money is there now, money has a funny tendency. I mean, as Scott pointed out yesterday morning, we still had in crypto and bitcoin was less than a third of it. Well, less than a third actually we saw in crypto on the failed breakout, we saw almost $800 million get liquidated. So there is plenty of animal spirits in bitcoin. If in fact it gets there, it's just very highly leveraged that tends to get wiped out. So I think you just have to be watching that anyway. Gator, I see your hand up.

[D]

Yeah, I fully agree with what you said. And I think you have to look at how in the past, the movements in the crypto marketplace, usually you saw a rise in bitcoin and Ethereum first and then afterwards the large caps would go and the mid caps would go, and then small caps would go. And the rotation that you saw in the crypto markets with crypto, the big caps leading and then the other ones following. I think now that there's more institutional adoption of at least bitcoin, we are seeing that bitcoin is entering into that mix and that the relation of capital as described earlier by one of the other speakers, I didn't really see because X was glitching, we were speaking, but was also mentioned, you know, like, is this run of, is it sucking out the liquidity basically of crypto assets currently the run of silver and gold? I believe yes. And I believe this relation of capital is basically now also including gold, silver and commodities. And I believe the more adoption we will see of different platforms, traditional platforms, trading platforms and exchanges accepting both crypto and traditional stocks and assets, the more of that mix up we will see and at the end of the day, everyone is looking to maximize their gains. So the capital rotation will continuously take place. It's just very obviously now that it's in the commodities, in the gold and silver sector and not necessarily in the crypto sector. So, yeah, it's a very interesting time and I think that relation will come. It's just a question of when.

[E]

Hey, I've got a opinion on price. Probably not so much on the precious metals end. I think precious metals are going to continue to move not at the rate that it has, but as. As governments and people around the world see the continued debasement of the dollar and other currencies, they will continue to buy gold and silver follows gold onto, onto central bank balance sheets. As far as bitcoin goes itself. You know, I've been very vocal against the mainstream narrative here that we're still in a four year cycle that I October was the peak and I wouldn't expect anything to happen until either after the World Series this year or after midterm elections. But the price of bitcoin, again, another unpopular thing I'm going to say here is the reason why it's been so range bound over the last year. And a lot of people have said yes, it's having its IPO moment. And I actually agree with that. What an IPO moment means is that okay, this was something that was high flying. If you think about equities for a moment, there's a really big multiple to what its actual value is. And where bitcoin tracks is global into monetary supply. And there's been a lot of great models that have been built and, and even my own model shows bitcoin should be around 150. But the reality is that was based on a very high multiple to into global monetary supply. And now that the adoption curve is coming to a peak, a lot of people own it, particularly now in their 401ks and in their brokerage accounts because ETFs have been available for so long now. The adoption curve is slowly, as far as increase goes, is slowly coming to an end. So the percentage of increase of people that can be onboarded into the bitcoin network, I mean there's just not enough people to continue that accelerated pace, which means that the multiple goes down. So what I think bitcoin is finding right now is what is the true price, what is the true multiple into global monetary supply? And it feels like it's settling into where we are today at about probably the real price is probably somewhere between 90, 95 and then once you have that as the basis, then as monetary supply continues to grow, which right now it's about a 7% clip, that is how Bitcoin's going to grow. Now there is still speculation, there is still a larger network effect where people can still be onboarded but just not at the regular pace. So it's probably in the long run somewhere north of 7% and it's probably somewhere in the low double digits is my guess. And I know that's a pretty good dismal view because everybody wants bitcoin to run to a million dollars in the next five years. But we're there. And I hate to say it, but we've come to that moment and what needs to happen now is greater usage on the adoption curve. So look, 2026 I believe is going to be the year where there's going to be a lot more interest in tokenization. I mean New York Stock Exchange just announced yesterday they're going to go 247 utilizing protocols, blockchain protocols to run their back end, which is amazing.

[B]

Right?

[E]

This is what everybody's been working so hard for for a very long period of time. So the tokens that are going to Garner interest in 2026 are the ones that frankly are deeply involved in the financialization of assets. And from my perspective Chair, I'm running several single token ETFs. Where I'm seeing the greatest number of inflows right now is HBAR and xrp. And they're the two groups that are doing the most on financial tokenization in my opinion. I mean you also have all the open source protocols, which is great, but the ones that are really delving in and partnering, those are the ones. And that's where I'm seeing the biggest inflows from ETFs. Even today we're seeing continued inflows even in a down market.

[A]

Gator.

[D]

Yeah, I fully agree with what Stephen said. I think currently we're finding that equilibrium with Bitcoin. However, I do read a lot of news nowadays about other countries wanting to adopt Bitcoin on their balance sheet. And I think as soon as that starts to happen on a larger scale Again, maybe 2026 is the year for that, we will probably exceed that range at some point again, even if it's not just because of the countries accumulating. Of course when that kind of announcement comes it will bring hype with it depending on the country. And I believe that is possibly one of the reasons why the range could be broken this year. And when I'm looking at the tokenization of the stock markets, I think it's very interesting what Stephen also said about HBAR and XRP seeing inflows in the ETFs there despite the current market condition. I was also watching Content Network because they're into tokenized real world assets and seeing that they are also moving sort of against the market currently. Same goes for. It's probably related also to the New York Stock Exchange news as discussed here earlier. But I do believe that these things might pull it out of that range later in the year if that is going to happen.

[A]

All I can say. Do you see any hands up? Yeah, go ahead.

[B]

I was just, I, I just saw a tweet and I, or a post and I, I Couldn't I, I couldn't refind it again from Max Kaiser talking about how the debasement trade is alive and well. It's gold and silver. And he made the comment that bitcoin is, is not in the party. And to me, you know, hearing, you know, hearing this and seeing the, you know, Steve, your post on, you know, comparing into 2022, you know, sans the all the liquidations which cause people to be forced selling is music to my ears. I mean, that's all I can say is if when you start making allowances for relationships to money supply, you either believe bitcoin has the potential to become digital gold and or beyond because gold is a smaller percentage of money supply than it ever used to be back long before 71. It is a simple question of belief in terms of that and you should value it that way. Now, my mental model and Scott, people are probably tired of hearing it, but I want to revisit it because it's very relevant is bitcoin will trade like an option on that adoption. I will point out that bitcoin's network, you more than anyone else on this panel are well aware of this fact. Even despite the fact that the hash rate's down 15% since October 10, it's still 6x what the hash rate was in 2022. So to expect the price to be the same, well, probably not so much. Right. And the fact is that the market is morose and the more people and the longer people capitulate, either in time because they just say I'm tired of it and let sailor and the ETFs buy all the bitcoin from the crypto folks or in price. And so we see a serious correction. Both capitulations are creating fire for a bull run when it happens, and I don't know when it will happen. I'm not Nostradamus. If I did, I'd be floating on a yacht instead of sitting in a condo in Miami. So, you know, it's, but it is important for people to understand that we, there's, there are bulls who talk about this stuff in terms of where they think it's going to go, but there's not a whole lot of money being committed to it from the crypto community. That to me is a really important distinction. And you know, I think that that matters. Perry and I see you lifted your mic. Are you.

[F]

Yeah. Jumping in here. I've, I'm just going to keep saying what I've been saying when I've joined this spaces previously, which A piece of the price action has to do with the rehypothecation that's in the system now. One thing that's very different about bitcoin today versus the last cycle or even just a couple of years ago is we now have these bitcoin treasury companies and there's paper bitcoin. So, you know, I'm on the board of Nakamoto Kindly md, which is rebranding to Nakamoto. And we've had a couple of different loans where our bitcoin is encumbered. And this is. I'm not sharing anything that's not public, but we've seen this with many other treasury companies or even just companies that have bitcoin on the balance sheet. They take that bitcoin, they put a loan against it, and then that. That bitcoin can then be loaned out again. So that is impacting the price of bitcoin. And I think that is one reason why we're not seeing the type of price action that so many people thought we would have. But I still think it's coming. I still think it's coming. Demand. You know, it's great to see Stephen here. I've known Stephen for a long time. He's a true crypto and bitcoin og. I think everything he says is right. Demand is an important point. But also, as we're seeing that maturation and the institutionalization of bitcoin, we're also seeing these types of Wall street products entering the system as well. Dave, I wanted to come back to what you mentioned at the very beginning of the spaces, which is what's happening in D.C. with the market structure bill. And you talked about Brian Armstrong and Ellie Terrett, their little back and forth on. On X. So I'm happy to kind of give an update on what's going on with the bill. So last week, as it was widely reported, the Senate Banking Committee decided to pull their markup. So we had a very strong legislative pathway for the bill. This is extremely important. We hadn't really had a pathway like this open up. And over the 12 years I've been doing bitcoin and crypto policy, and I was the first person in the country to become an advocate in Washington, D.C. for this industry. So I've been there since day negative one, working on this. So to get a bill passed through Congress, you've got to get it through the relevant committees. You've got to get it to the floor for a vote. We did not have the votes to get it out of the Senate Banking Committee's. Markup last week. Why is that? What exactly happened? Well, the banks had lobbied very, very hard to create a new provision in the bill that really had not been previously discussed or was widely debated or was a part of the conversation at all. And this is a bill we've been working on for over five years. This isn't something we just threw together this year. This is many years in the making. They decided that they would be against the bill if it did not ban crypto companies from offering yield on stablecoin deposits. I find this extremely egregious. And the little spat you saw between Brian and Ellie I don't think is truly fair to just to defend Brian Armstrong. What I'm seeing is that you have the banks coming in who really have nothing to do with this bill. They're not a part of the, the scope. They're not, you know, they're, they're not the ones being regulated. It's crypto companies, it's crypto exchanges that we're talking about. And they don't want crypto companies to offer yield on stable coins. So I've been doing quite a bit of digging on what, you know, what, what is the history here? And just to give you a little bit better insight, banks, and particularly the big banks, they earn interest on their deposits at the fed. So since 2008, big banks or banks, they keep interest on deposit at the Federal Reserve. And right now the banks are earning 5.7% risk free on their deposits at the Fed. What's important to understand about that is that those are funds that could be used otherwise. Those funds could be used to reduce the federal deficit. Those are funds that otherwise would have been deposited at the space was downloaded via spaces down.com visit to download your spaces today. US treasury but they went to pay the big banks and they have been receiving trillions in interest on reserves since 2008. What does that mean for us, for users, for consumers, for anyone that has a bank account or. Well, right now banks are paying anywhere from 0.1 to 0.5 to 1 to 5 basis points on savings, a very, very small amount. I actually got my interest thing in the mail last week. I have to give to my accountant and I made $87 on interest at my bank last year, which, you know, isn't, isn't much at all. So banks are earning 5.7% from interest on deposits at the Fed. You're getting 0.1 to 0.5%, 1 to 5 basis points. So what's left that's the yield that goes to the bank number.

[B]

Perry Ann, as I've done the math, the smallest number is $180 billion a year of a subsidy that the federal government is giving to the banks. But they're not. But it's actually way worse than that because it's not a subsidy they're giving to the banks out of the taxpayers, which would be bad, but far worse. It's a penalty that the savers are subsidizing bank and bank bonuses. And so that's what's going on. I mean, honestly, politically, the world's biggest losing proposition, if people knew it would actually be a massive lunch pail issue. I suspect the Republicans know this and.

[F]

They do, they do know this. They absolutely.

[B]

Part of the reason is they want that. But, but I can ask you one other question other than that, because this topic, one, you and I could just beat on banks for a while. I mean, whole point of fractional reserve banking. I mean, you've talked with Caitlyn Long. You, you know her, her point of view. You know what happened when she tried to introduce a fee for service model. It, the whole thing is a morass because it's all dependent upon flawed assumptions and lack of technology. But there was one other part of the bill that I found problematic that I could see why Coinbase would hate it more than anybody else, which was, and, and frankly, it doesn't even make sense. And there was language in the bill that would stop the SEC from granting exemptive relief for securities that were tokenized, that were different than in others, which to me is insane because tokenization implies a very different structure underneath. And there are rules like transfer agent rules, etc, that effectively can't work in a tokenized world. So the SEC needs to, and in fact, like I've talked with some of them, I'm having other talkings with with others of them. The SEC is well aware of the fact that they need, that they need to either change rules or have exemptive relief against archaic rules. And it looks like at a cursory read, this bill blocked that and that was what Coinbase is objecting to. Have you heard that too? Or is that just, is that just a trial balloon that some idiot put in that was going to, it's going to quickly leave?

[F]

No, I think that's another negotiating point and another negotiating sticking point. I mean, the more leeway the SEC has or the ability to issue exemptive relief to specific crypto companies or projects, the, you know, the more power the SEC has, which is a controversial point, but that One, I think actually goes both ways, because I can argue it on both sides. On one side. Well, you know, what? If Democrats win and you have another Gary Gensler like figure at the sec, we can make an argument that we really don't want the SEC to have broad, authoritative powers and just be able to say you're in or you're out. But on the other side, the whole point of the bill is clarity. We need clarity. Projects need to know when they're in the SEC's jurisdiction or not, so they know who their regulator is and how to bring products to market, how to get through the regulatory process. So I don't. I don't think that's what this really was about. That was a sticking point, I think. I think the big theme here is the banks. And this is not a new theme. This has been the thorn in our side since the beginning of Bitcoin. You know, the banks don't want competition. They definitely do not want you to be able to earn interest on your reserves. Not only will they not pay you to be a customer at their institution, they're not going to pay you. They're going to take the spread, but they won't allow you to get that elsewhere either. So this really has very little to do with policy. This has very little to do with safety. You're hearing things about deposit, flight risk, whatever. That's not what this is about. This is about protecting a very, very, very powerful monopoly. That is what we're up against. That is why it is so contentious, and that is why it is so important for people to speak out and to vote. That's all we have left.

[B]

I saw Stephen and then Gator.

[E]

Yeah. Hey, good to see you. Perry Ann. It's been a couple of years.

[F]

It's been too long. Good to see you.

[E]

It's been way too long. I've got a dozen questions for you, but I'm not going to bore everybody. I'll reach out to you later.

[D]

But.

[E]

There'S two things on this bill that I was very interested in. And again, one of them was the distribution of yield, and that competes with two different industries. The first one is the banks. And you've already kind of gone into that and really appreciate that. The other group that stablecoins, if they indeed have a yield, competes with are asset managers that run mutual funds. And essentially, one of the ways that I'm looking at this is if USDC is allowed to not register as a security and distribute a yield on platforms like Robinhood, Coinbase, Kraken, even Where there's competitive. See, they're now onboarding ETFs, which are a form of mutual fund that has a yield that is registered. There's competition there, too. So I'm curious, behind the scenes, are you seeing asset managers like BlackRock and Schwab step in against the bill, or is it only the banks?

[F]

I haven't seen that. That doesn't mean it's not happening. Yeah, but the, you know, the asset managers like Blackrock, a lot of them are. Well, I mean, BlackRock has all of their Bitcoin ETF held. Their custodian is Coinbase. So they have an, a very clear and inextricable partnership with Coinbase. So, you know, I would, I would think they would be more on the side of supporting was best for Coinbase, not what's best for the banks. But, you know, the mutual funds in the banking industry on this exact issue were at odds several years ago when that issue went through its own policy formation. And I wasn't there for those fights. That was before my time. But for the folks in Washington that do remember those fights, one of the quotes that stuck with me is that, look, the banks remember when they lost that fight and mutual funds were able to be regulated through the sec, not in the banking system. The banks lost that. They had fought for that. And the banks have not forgotten that. And they're not going to lose this fight on stable coins. They're not going to lose this fight on crypto, because they've lost out on a lot. And it's not that they've lost out. It's just that there's more competition in the marketplace. This is the United States of America. This is the center of the free market. We believe in free competition. This should not be an oligopoly, a cartel, a monopoly. There shouldn't be one group, one small group of companies or people that can short the markets. We should have competition. That's what's best for the people. That's what's best for the markets. That's what creates the best products, and that's what's being blocked here. And it's really disappointing to me that you have members of Congress that don't see either they do see through that and they don't care, or they. They don't understand that they're beholden to the incumbents. And it's a real problem. It is a very real problem. And it's us, the people that take the hit.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

One of the interesting things that I saw was you had rhetoric from Trump against the Fed tapping interest rates on credit cards and then even slowing down or trying to prevent corporations from buying single family homes. All the things that benefit Americans, even though some of them may not be necessarily capitalistic, but all those things affect the banks and force the Clarity act too. And it seemed to be a very concerted effort to push back, utilizing their pump at Jerome Powell and other members of Congress to do their dirty work. But it does seem to be a very concerted effort to push back against all of this on the bank. And then, and then of course, the Fed, which is, you know, I'm glad you said what you said about the Fed, because what would help most Americans right now is actually lowering rates because then your credit card rate, your auto rates, your student loan rates all start going down. But instead of doing that, they increase, they kept, they kept rates at a fairly high level, in my opinion, and have increased the size of the balance sheet to support the banks, to give them the interest that they need on their deposit so they can make the spread.

[F]

I wish more people understood that. And once you really think about it, it's truly disgusting. I mean, Perry, I can't, I can't think of any other way to really explain this. Other, I mean, this is, all I.

[B]

Can tell you is I worked at Citigroup in 2008. I was managing director. I was one of the people who didn't survive it and ended up going to Sigma. And it worked out for me. But the average human being believes that tarp, you know, the, that facility is what rescued the banks, as disgusting as that was. But that was the, the, that, that was what, the flashy thing they were holding out in front of them. But what they were really doing was doing what you said. And so allowing banks to earn a risk free rate that's above market at the Federal Reserve and lever the hell out of it is how they bailed out the banks. I mean, Citigroup without a doubt was insolvent at one point in 2008. I mean, and I don't mean a little insolvent, I mean a lot insolvent. So they took the debt, they moved it to another place, and then they turned on the spigots where they could literally earn hundreds of billions a year every year and have been doing so for 17 years now. Obviously they donate, it's not just City group, they, they donate a lot of money to Congress. And so, you know, look, until we do something about slush funds and campaign, you know, donations being actual bribes, it's really hard to believe any of this stuff is going to change. I mean, but, but you're right, that's exactly what happened. Not a lot of people focus on it. Both parties benefit. So there's no way either party is going to say boo about it. And so that's where you're at. The thing that's interesting here is the actual rhetoric they're using is. And this is the rhetoric is the community banks. It's not the big banks that worried about it, it's the community banks. So basically they're trying to tell, the politicians are trying to tell people that you're protecting George Bailey's savings and loan from It's a Wonderful Life. And that's what these evil stablecoin issuers are going to do, is bankrupt that. And so you won't have the community banks, which is a completely nonsens. It doesn't survive any scrutiny. But it is the rhetoric that is literally what the aba, American Bankers association letters say. But anyway, as I said, we could talk about this until whatever this will get resolved. The interesting thing is the genius act already passed. Holding it hostage for a clarity act is kind of. It feels like desperation to me and I mean, we'll see what happens.

[F]

To me. It feels like the gloves are off. You know, this isn't the banks working behind the scene. You know, I think the playing field has really shifted dramatically since Trump has taken office several years ago. You know, before we had the crypto president, the banks were, were doing everything they can to try to stifle the growth of the crypto ecosystem. And why do you think there was the war on crypto? Why do you think you had the Elizabeth Warrens, the shared browns of the world, trying to, you know, demonize our industry? I do believe a lot of that was pieces being moved by the banks, but that was happening behind the scenes. You would have never seen any of those moves, these chess pieces on the playing board. You would have never seen a bank move that piece. Now we're in it. We're in a different era where you actually see them take these moves, you see them take these hits. It's very obvious the gloves have come off. It's happening in the open now. So it's. That's why I'm saying, I think it is important that we use our voices because that's really all we have left. If you don't get debanked, because I probably will get debunked for everything I'm saying right now. I was debating last year, who knows, I'll be debunked again this year. But this really comes down to our fundamental rights to be able to use what we want, to exchange our goods and services with one another. We shouldn't be beholden to one particular system. We should be able to use what we want. That's what's really at stake here. And if they take that from us, you're taking a fundamental right which should be protected by the First Amendment because software is code and software is protected by free speech. We lose the First Amendment, what's left?

[B]

Well, we have 15 minutes left, but that would be a great mic drop moment.

[A]

Seriously?

[B]

Yeah, that. Look, I, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, but I think you know that, but you know, it, it is, it is interesting. I'd like to, to circle back and see if anyone cares on the altcoin thesis, because the New York Stock Exchange news. Look, I know these people well, I've known them for, for years. I, I go back decades in tradfi with working with exchanges and doing a lot of things, but there's like no details there. And I'm curious, does anybody else think that, that, that. Because I've made the statement, I, I believe this for seven years now, that the entire financial system is going to go digital. I don't even know if the New York Stock Exchange proposal will be pairwise, meaning that instead of everything being nominated in dollars, that everything is denominated in something and it could be a stable coin, it could be a currency, et cetera, which is a hallmark of how crypto markets work. We don't know if there's any fungibility between what you would trade in New York on their tokenized exchange and if somebody else wanted to compete with them, such as in the stock markets. Actually, if you trade in the national market system, you buy IBM in New York, you could sell it on nasdaq, that's easy. We have no idea if that's going to be supported or if it's going to be a completely closed system. So I don't know what it is. What I do know is that the very large, that ice, the parent company of New York, NASDAQ and CBOE are all going to fight like hell to be able to offer every asset and compete with Coinbase. And one of the reasons that they are aligning with the crypto folks on clarity, because New York specifically made the point they needed regulatory clarity to be able to do this, is is they want to be able to compete. So the question is, do they want to be able to compete or they want to be able to exclude. Well, we know what they want to exclude, whether they'll be successful or not. But I do think that that as a whole is a driver into the altcoin markets and why things are kind of particularly soft today. I'm curious if anybody agrees, disagrees or if you know, if this is just my lone wolf opinion. I mean Scott, have you talked about this? What do you think?

[A]

I actually blanked out. I got blocked there and was trying to get back on. So I missed the last part of your state.

[B]

What I was asking is, is does the fact that the New York Stock Exchange under ICE trying to go completely tokenized without mention of Ethereum or Solana or XRP or whatever else, is that part of why you think that, that some of the hot money and some of the performance, because the performance is pretty, pretty difficult today is going.

[A]

Yeah, I mean I have a. Yeah, I have a couple reasons. So a like you as you kind of mentioned before, I'm not sure that all this fundamentally good news for blockchain technology and adoption is fundamentally good for retail investors because as you said before, I'm not confident they'll do it on public blockchains. We'll see. But so it may not even be investable all of this adoption Also I just think, as you've said repeatedly, the hot ball of money is just not in crypto right now. So news doesn't matter. They're trading silver and gold and all the gamblers that used to pump all coins are in predictive mark prediction markets. So there's just nobody here to move prices of anything which feels a lot.

[B]

More bear markety than it does anything else.

[A]

It does, it does. The question is what brings those people back? I'm not saying that it won't happen. There's always a narrative, there's always something new. But beyond Bitcoin it's much more challenging or I should say beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, xrp. I think Steve mentioned it. Anything that has some level of institutional adoption, ETF available, treasury company, you name it. Like coin number 47. Even if they have some big piece of fundamental news, who's going to buy it and move it if it's not the speculators and gamblers who are buying to sell it higher.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, yes, I think that's exactly right. I mean it's. Look, it is always. What's the old expression? Buying when you're very, very uncomfortable doing so is always what's the most profitable. Of course that's that's only true.

[A]

Unless you're buying a used trash can.

[B]

Unless you're buying. Exactly. That's why I was, I was chuckling. It's exactly right. But I mean, you know, it's as I said, the markets look, you know, Ethereum about to fall below 3,000 is kind of one of those things that get people's attention. Salana below 130 yada, you can go up and down or we could talk about Zcash. You're, you know, you're, you're down below 4, you know, so it's been cut.

[A]

Yeah, I mean I just, I, I just kind of look across the board and you know, we had a lot of things I think that are priced in and actually have some reverse momentum on those. Right. I mean I don't want to beat dead horses, but like people, myself included, I, for, for a very long time thought something like the Clarity act was a foregone conclusion. Like if I was a gambling man now, I would say there's less than a 5% chance clarity passes anytime soon.

[B]

Well, you should be going on Kalshi then or on or on poly. Well, you can't.

[A]

Yeah, but I don't, you know, so since I'm an American, I don't cheat and use VPNs and stuff. I went on Poly Market to make that bet and it was like at 65, 70 cents or something and by the time I went it was like, you're blocked as American. I was like, I've never done this, whatever. And then it was like at like 40 by the time I even revisited it two days later.

[B]

Yeah, it's funny, I thought lawyer and I saw you making some emojis. I mean, what's up dude?

[E]

Yeah, I mean I think like I'm definitely in the mode of now of like buying back bags of majors and like I really just still fundamentally believe we're way before the adoption of these things. And we've seen that at least a handful of them like you mentioned will be here for that adoption. And, and you know, honestly I have some worries about Ethereum. I think there's some competition there. But we've seen that Solana, like when a company, it's the retail brand, you know, when a company launches, there's going to be activity there in the future as crypto in general gets adopted. I think it's inevitable that crypto will be more. Adopt more ubiquitous. You know, I've been right before everybody was using blogs and I said they'd be using the Internet and they were, I was saying BRB and nobody knew what that was and they thought I was a nerd and they were right. And now they, they say it and you know, and I think in, in whether it's 2 years or 10 years, crypto is going to be run the rails for everything. And it's very unlikely that those things like Solana, where, you know, we know there's still exist and be on the forefront. It's unlikely to me that that won't be a good buy. Now looking back.

[B]

Gator, is that a new hand?

[D]

Yes, actually. But if it's okay. I agree, by the way, with what lawyer said. I wanted to circle back to perryanne and what she said about the banks and the banks actually fighting against Bitcoin because they can't earn from it in the same way that they can from traditional money. I was actually wondering what you guys, all of you in the panel here, think of the neobank development where, you know, you have these crypto banks nowadays that are trying to include these services, trying to cater to the people that are not familiar with their own hardware wallet or their own funds being held in a wallet digitally. I do feel like there's a big market out there that can be catered to by these Neo banks. And I'm wondering actually, and that's also a question to Perry and in particular how you see that development, like what would be the role or should be the role of banks or neo banks in the crypto space in your opinions.

[B]

Since I don't see Perry Ann jumping in, I will say this. The big fight that's happening. Yeah, forget the obvious, the yield fight, I mean, it's huge. I'm not downplaying it. But the big fight, the one that matters the most is will we have a future where all investments, whether it's a mutual fund, whether it's a stable coin, if it's all tokenized, and it's all available from a single platform, whether it be Coinbase, Robin Hood, Morgan Stanley's, the remnants of E Trade, Charles Schwab, it doesn't matter. If all of these platforms can offer all those investment options to be free, freely swappable, regardless of where it is 247 and they are able to incorporate payments because stablecoins give you the ability to offer a payment so you could pay your bills from them, then what happens? The obvious answer is the $7 trillion that are sitting in bank deposits that are there specifically so people can pay their bills over a period of time, time without having to worry that it takes days and it literally does take days. Like if you're in a bank and you have money in an investment account and you want to move it to your checking account, it could take two days. And that's with T +1 settle, assuming it's in an ETF or something like.

[C]

That.

[B]

You get rid of that. Then all of a sudden you can, these Neo banks can start offering products such as sweeping, such as being able to make payments and being able to sweep into investment products. Once that is true, first of all, it's a far better system for investor savers, for humans. It is a much more competitive and less profitable system for banks. And that's really the smart firms what they're fighting. But what's funny about that is a lot of the smartest firms already know that and they just want to stake out their claim to being one of the first people to offer that because that primacy gives you an advantage. We saw the exact same thing by the way, in the late 90s with electronic trading and equities. You saw the wirehouses get adopted. I mean if you think it's a surprise, Charles Schwab is the only one that survived. Everyone else was bought, whether by Morgan Stanley or somebody else. So it's interesting. But your neobank question I think is very relevant. Ten years from now, that's all there will be. That's my suspicion.

[F]

Yeah, no, just real quick, I think it's kind of the same thing on neobanks. I mean, why, I mean a neobank is, you know, essentially a, a digital first banking company. It's a fintech company and a banking charter. The purpose of going through a bank charter is so you can, you can get to market and offer these products to market through a federal charter. Well, ideally a federal charter, but I think it's going to be the same themes. If you have there, there is no entity where the banks want to lose control of their monopoly on yield. You mentioned Caitlin Long who's tried to bring forward a full reserve so 100% backed deposit bank to market. That's been blocked over and over again. There were attempts to do that before bitcoin, before Caitlin Long, before crypto. There was attempts to bring in full reserve banks. Those were also blocked. I think if you have a NEO bank that's trying to do something similar, there's going to be a big fight to protect the banks from being able to have a monopoly on that yield. So it's, you're seeing the market try to bring, to try to compete, but you have a regulatory system that's protecting the banking system from having any competition. So it's, I mean, it's quite frustrating to see this play out where there are better products for consumers, there are better products that could be brought to market, and the only reason they're not available is because regulators are preventing that and they're protecting incumbents. So, I mean, yeah, I, I wake up every day and I feel grateful that I've chosen to work in an industry and I have the opportunity to work in an industry where we can compete and that I don't spend my time lobbying politicians to protect my monopoly. It just seems like a very sad way to live. Your only way to compete is by paying off politicians, not actually creating better products and services. So I feel strongly that we're on the right side of history here. But these are the, you know, whether it's neo banking, crypto companies that want to put pay stable coin interest, stablecoin companies that want to pay interest on reserves, whether it's, you know, a full reserve bank, it's it, it all comes back to that same thing.

[A]

Mauricio and then this will be kind of final thoughts as we wrap here.

[C]

Yeah, sure. So I'd like to just share brief comments on the point of neobanks just because LEDN does take in stablecoin deposits from clients not in the US not in Canada, but broadly speaking from most other international countries. And we see great adoption of that account. We pay up to 8% on that account, 6.5% on the first 100K. And it's been, the adoption we're seeing in emerging markets is pretty strong because the way we generate that yield is we lend those stable coins to our Bitcoin back loans that do not. The Bitcoin just stays in custody so they are fully protected. And we are seeing more and more adoption around that model. We're obviously paying a close eye to how the Clarity act shakes out and what potential doors that opens in the US market. But I'll say even in the stablecoin yield world, the cost of capital for us, if you look at what you're getting at a bank, which is basically zero, and then you look at what you can get with Treasuries, it still pales in comparison with what you can get with something like strc, SDRC is still acting as a bit of, I would say a black liquidity hole because they're paying 11%, which when you're competing against that type of capital, you know, doesn't, I mean, and again, this is why I think it's super interesting this idea of stablecoin yield because it is a very attractive product and we did see a lot of demand for stablecoin yield when we had the run ups in blockfi and Celsius and all those guys. Even the evolution of stablecoin yield has shifted tremendously even after the SEC went after blockfi and those other players. So I do think these neobanks, this model is going to thrive. This idea of using stablecoins more and more is only going to pick up and companies that offer great yield or good services around stablecoins are going to continue to do well. It is, I think going to be a bit of a fork in how that plays out in the rest of the world versus the US.

[A]

Points well taken. I am glitching hard here trying to be able to talk. Sorry about that but we are here right at time. I think we covered everything we intended to today and so we will be back tomorrow with yet another crypto. Town Hall 10:15am Eastern Standard Time Give everybody on stage a follow. They deserve it, they're the best and we will see you tomorrow.