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The Wolf Of All Streets
Trump’s Crypto Executive Order Shocks Markets: Why Isn’t Bitcoin Skyrocketing?
00:32:51
Trump’s Crypto Executive Order Shocks Markets: Why Isn’t Bitcoin Skyrocketing?
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- [00:01]
Scott Melker
After days of anticipation, the crypto world finally got its executive order and in true fashion, had a lot of difficulty unpacking it, understanding what was really happening, infighting among the communities, and no mention of bitcoin. And that was just one of the small stories from this week and specifically from yesterday, which may have been the wildest day I can ever recall in the news cycle in crypto. Luckily, I have Nathaniel Whittemore, NLW, here to unpack all of it on the Friday 5. Let's go, let's go. Let's do. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of all streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that, like, button, button. Gonna bring on NLW right now. Man, I don't know even where to start. Yesterday we were like, what are the top five stories? And every 20 minutes the chat changed. And I realized this morning that the Trumpet Melania coins weren't even on the list. And we have never discussed those because it started last Friday night.
- [01:14]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I know, it's wild. I think, you know, look, I think probably if we had, if we had thought about it, we would have anticipated that maybe the first week after inauguration would be a big one. But it has certainly delivered and then.
- [01:25]
Scott Melker
Some and in so many different ways. But let's start from the beginning, I guess, because I think that this was sort of the first hint that Donald Trump was going to actually deliver on promises for the crypto and bitcoin community. As discussed, Ross Ulbricht was Freeze. Trump pardons imprisoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Here was his post on Truth Social. You guys can read it for yourselves. But listen, this was extremely important to the bitcoin community. For those who don't remember, Ross obviously got two life sentences pledged, plus 40 years for his involvement in Silk Road early bitcoiner. Many feel who took the fall for the entire industry at that time still spent over 11 years in jail. He is free. This is really, really significant.
- [02:13]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Yeah, I mean, listen, there were a couple different categories of people who thought Ross should, should be freed in some way. The first were those who thought he never, you know, that he took the fall for, you know, basically that the principle of the thing that he was trying to do should be legal. Right. There's sort of a, a hardcore libertarian bent that just thinks that markets are supposed to be free and when people come together, they should be able to trade whatever they want. There's also a lot of folks, and I say this is the more mainstream you know, free Ross opinion that the sentence was totally disproportionate to what he was actually convicted of. And you'll often see, or you would often see when people were debating this, you know, accusations around, you know, him putting out hits on people and things like that. But the important thing to remember is that those weren't the charges that he was actually convicted. Right. Also, later, a couple of the people involved in. In. In the case were, you know, were. Were disciplined and, and arrested for their, you know, for. For things they did. It was just a shady thing the whole, whole time through. And so there was. It's very hard to justify, I think, the, The. The amount of the sentence, and that's what made it feel so political to people. Right. It was the first time that in the context of this new bitcoin space, that the government, you know, to many people, it felt like the government really exerted what they could do. Right. The power to just sort of throw someone, you know, lock someone up and throw away the key. And so there's a whole lot of. Of meaning imbued in this. The second piece of why I think this is so significant to people is that to your point, Scott, it was the. The first of the campaign promises that. That Trump made largely related to this community that, that he came through on. And so it was a big, big moment for a lot of folks when that. When that was actually signed.
- [03:53]
Scott Melker
Yeah. I mean, if you take a look at the sentences given to Mexican cartel leaders, they were nothing compared to what Ross got. And those were actually about moving directly billions of dollars in drugs and directly murdering people. Yeah, the dis. So. So it was very hard to defend the sentence, even if you thought he was guilty of all of the things and that he was accused of. But regardless, he's out. I'm really curious to see what he does next. Right. I mean, I think it was sort of a pipe dream that he would be here. He was a very early bitcoiner. I wonder if he'll build something. I wonder if we're going to see him on Rogan.
- [04:29]
Nathaniel Whittemore
He's definitely going to do the podcast tour. There's no doubt about that.
- [04:33]
Scott Melker
I mean, I just can't wait to talk to him. We got to get him on the show. Man, that would be absolutely incredible. So that was the first order of business, and then it left the. The crypto community a little bit aghast that we didn't immediately get an executive order or a strategic bitcoin reserve or any of the things that were promised in the first one or two days, but we did finally get it yesterday. So let's talk about the executive order because, man, this one confused a lot of people. There's so much to unpack. Trump signs executive actions related to cryptocurrency AI Eleanor Terrett did a great job of unpacking the key points here, but we can sort of just summarize. I think a lot of action on CBDCs, which I think people really, really are happy about, that we effectively should never see a CBDC in this country, operation choke point 2.0 being looked into and an end. I mean, there's so much to unpack here and maybe we should talk about all that first and then get to what it looks like for a strategic reserve.
- [05:37]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Yeah, so I think that the way, the way that the, basically, I think that a lot of the controversy surrounding this has to do with two totally different ways of thinking about what the goal of this was. I think that bitcoiners and crypto folks more broadly wanted individual executive orders dealing with the specific set of issues that matter to them, right? An executive order on a strategic Bitcoin reserve, an executive order on Operation Chokepoint 2.0. An executive order on, you know, whatever you name it, right? Is a set of issues that are distinct for them. First thing this did is it bunches it all together, right? This is this sort of placeholder, everything in the digital assets, crypto and whatever space executive order. And it does very much feel to me like a placeholder executive order that's more a declaration of intent than it is specific policy. Right? There's two types of executive orders. Very broadly speaking and reductively speaking, there are those who have some specific action that they mandate that's got to happen, right? JFK assassination being released. That is a very specific, direct thing. It says, you go figure out how to make this happen, but it's happening. The other type of executive order, which frankly is a lot more common, is the, hey, we're going to deal with this thing, executive order, but you know, we're going to take some time to figure it out, right? If you look at the Biden executive order on AI last year, it was, you know, 180 pages of them researching and discovering and exploring and things like that. And, and that's what this is, right? This is an executive order that, that again, articulates a bunch of different areas that they, that they want to dig into but doesn't commit to specific policies in most cases. And I think that was sort of part one of the disappointment. The other thing that's starting to become really clear to me that is not necessarily super pleasing for the crypto industry is that it seems pretty clear that the administration views crypto and AI and future tech stuff all as one big lump of their constituency. They are not distinguishing or differentiating between the AI lobby and the crypto lobby. And the AI lobby has a hell of a lot more money and is a much bigger deal to them. It's very clear because on day one of the presidency, we got a $500 billion announcement with Masayoshi Son and Sam Altman and. And Larry Ellison there. And it's not that I think that the. The administration cares any less about crypto than we thought. It's just that the stakes in terms of the policy of bringing, you know, business back to America and stuff, there's clearly a bigger emphasis there because there's bigger dollars being spent. A half trillion dollars in infrastructure spend is just. Was waiting to be announced there. Right. And so the. The frustrating thing for the crypto community is that if the White House is lumping those things in together, there's always going to be kind of a jostling and attention of, you know, who gets. Who gets the most kind of presence and attention at any given time. And I think that the crypto industry understandably wanted their issues to be front and center. But my guess is that the way that the Trump administration sees it is that they had a set of executive actions to do in the first couple days that were inclusive of both of those things. Not really thinking about the fact that the constituencies are totally different. And so I think that they feel like they checked all the boxes for the first couple of days, but that's including all of the AI stuff they did, which is a whole separate set of executive orders. So that's my read. I could be completely wrong, but that's what it feels like to me.
- [08:52]
Scott Melker
David Sacks was named the White House AI and crypto czar.
- [08:56]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Bizarre.
- [08:56]
Scott Melker
We didn't get a crypto czar. We got an AI and crypto czar. I'm not saying that's a negative thing, by the way, but it just sort of echoes the point that you're making that these are definitely being lumped together. And I think you can take it a further step and say that people were very frustrated, at least a certain sect of crypto people, that bitcoin was not differentiated from crypto. Right. So you obviously got this language about a strategic stockpile which sort of alludes to holding all of the tokens and not selling them, but maybe not going as far as a reserve, which many people think would mean actually buying these assets and adding them. I can tell you anecdotally, I heard from multiple people and I set Twitter accidentally on fire by saying this yesterday, but XRP likely to be a very large part of that. I saw some very reliable chat groups of bitcoin maximalists who were saying one thing on Twitter and coping very hard in the background in these chats. Brad Garlinghouse has been in the White House aggressively and even subtweeted Pierre Rochard about the bitcoin strategic reserve, basically alluding to the fact that it would be crypto assets and it would be included. There's a lot going on here, but to my knowledge, the government doesn't yet hold xrp. So that was sort of another wrinkle because it's not, I think, on the list of tokens that they at least hold $1 million worth of. But the bottom line here is this left everyone saying, okay, what is a crypto strategic stockpile? Is that a reserve? Is that just bitcoin? What does it include? And then even to echo your further point, this sounded a lot more like the type of executive order we got from Biden. Even on crypto, take 30 days, 60 days, 180 days with these sort of benchmarks. Take a look at this, make recommendations, let me know, and then I have to share this as the final one at the end of all of that. That was the kicker, is that David Sachs went on an interview with Fox Business, said, yeah, we're going to evaluate that. We've not decided to do it yet. We need to study that about the strategic stockpile. So no commitment at all from the White House to actually do it as of now.
- [10:56]
Nathaniel Whittemore
So I have a whole slew of thoughts on this. First of all, sorry to bust everyone's bubble. This is the appropriate way to make policy. The appropriate way to make policy is not during the transition team to figure out what you're going to do with something this significant. It's to actually take the time to figure out if it's the right decision. Everyone can, like, you know, it doesn't need to happen in, you know, the next 30 days for it to be a meaningful step. Everyone wants it to happen as fast as possible, but our level of conviction in this space is not the same as everywhere else. By the way, one thing that, like, hasn't been talked very much about is that the crypto community and even the bitcoin community is not unanimously for this Right. Like Nick Carter has been screaming from a mountain, as he often is, has to do that we shouldn't be for a strategic bitcoin reserve. You know, he waited into the lion's den of Bitcoin magazine to actually write an op ed for that. And whether you agree with him or disagree, we should encourage that sort of thinking. So, one, I don't think it's a problem that they're actually going to debate the damn thing, you know, from, from a policy perspective. Two, I think that when it comes to the, the, the sort of XRP being included thing, there's, there's a few, a few ways to look at this. First of all, I think that, you know, the cynical take on the Trump administration from people who don't like him is that it's just going to be a grifter's paradise where it's like everything's going to go to the highest bidder. XRP is always the highest bidder when it comes to Washington policy. They play the game, they play it all the way. And of course, they're going to be in there advocating for themselves. By the way, we weren't that angry about XRP doing that when it was them fighting against unjust rules in their battle against the sec. Right. So it's just part of the situation. Second, I think that there's a broader point which is not even a cynical take on the Trump administration, which is that it's very clear that Trump and the people around him are not dyed in the wool bitcoiners to the exclusion of other things. What they are is America first reclaiming crypto and digital assets for America. I mean, he said it to the wf. I'm sure we'll talk about it in a minute. That, you know, he wants to make America the crypto capital of the world. I don't think he's really thinking about, you know, getting as granular as specific assets, even if he appreciates it, even if people around him appreciate what makes bitcoin different. This is the. America has a voracious appetite. It wants all the crypto assets. Right. And, and I think it's fine for bitcoiners to advocate for, you know, the strong kind of bitcoin placement and what makes it different. I'm pretty much in that camp, but I don't think it's discontiguous with Trump's, you know, kind of general policies to want all of it to be included. So that's the second thing. Third thing is, boy, is this nature healing when the Bitcoiners can hate on XRP again because we had a very weird two year period where we all had to be happy. Happy bedfellows of just like, you know, Ryan Selkis and Brad Garlinghouse hugging in their fight against Gary Gensler. This is a positive sign that we get to all be angry and have internecine warfare again.
- [13:47]
Scott Melker
At Messari Mainnet a few years ago, we did a dunk tank and I was somehow convinced to host this thing and Garlinghouse and Salkis came, came up as literal best friends to dunk each other in the tank I was holding. The joke on Twitter was I was holding Garlinghouse's balls while he was throwing them at Ryan Selkis. Eventually he ran up there and dunked it and they hugged it out soaking wet. You know that that's the best example you can give of everybody being Kumbaya for that period. But that also, I think speaks to a bigger issue we're going to have, which is that we had a common enemy, so to speak, in Gary Gensler and Elizabeth Warren and the Biden White House. Many's opinion and the crypto lobby came together and pooled all of their funds to make sure that Trump won. Now we're going to have a very disjointed lobby where people go for their self interest and do not view the entire industry as a whole. Yep.
- [14:38]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I mean, and this is, by the way, this is not a crypto phenomenon. You can see it in every part of the sort of Trump coalition is going through some version of this right now. You know, it's like there's the Elon and anti Elon forces. There's, you know, I mean, again, it's all of the. This is a very natural thing that happens, especially in the immediate wake of winning. Everyone's jockeying for position now. Everyone's once again, you know, out for their own thing. It's not pleasant necessarily. And I think that there's a lot to be said for trying to overcome that, to still be able to speak with singular voices on issues of import. But, you know, it would be unrealistic, I think, to assume that it's going to be any different than this way.
- [15:15]
Scott Melker
Right. So this is sort of a non story at this point, but Bitcoin makes muted move after Trump's new crypto executive order lacks concrete strategic reserve plan There was this sentiment that if we got any mention at any point of a strategic reserve reserve that the market was going to go straight to 500,000. But I think the amount of vagary around it and the way that it was structured guaranteed that that didn't happen. I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily, but it does make for a story that the market was just all over the place. I mean, yesterday was perhaps the most nonsensical day I've ever seen in the news cycle because many may have not seen. But I mean, I guess I can just show you now that we had Senator Lummis in the morning at 9, 9:16am here say big things are coming with a bitcoin B. Right. And so immediately the market went from 101 to 106, something like that, because everyone assumed this was going to be an executive order on a strategic reserve. We launched an emergency spaces for the announcement at like 25,000 people live only for it to be like big news for her. Yeah, you know that she's.
- [16:17]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I'm the chair of.
- [16:17]
Scott Melker
This is big news. It is big news. But like when you present it with the bitcoin B here on Twitter, and she rocked the price. It went all the way back down. Then Trump comes on tv, which we'll get to, and says the US Will be the world capital of artificial intelligence. Bitcoin goes way back up. Then we get his conversation with El Salvador. Then we get the executive order. Then we get David Sack's take on it. Just literally the most insane day. But let's talk about Lummis, because as much as the way she kind of did an announcement of an announcement in Justin sun style and it was a disappointment, it's actually huge that she will chair this new panel, the Senate panel on digital Assets, a subcommittee of the Senate Financial and that she will be talking about a bitcoin specific strategic reserve and will be the one who likely can actually get these things on the floor, decide what gets voted on. This really matters. And perhaps this is why the executive order was less specific, because we already know that Lummis has this on the table and we'll be pushing for it. How is even clear in Nashville when he came up short in his speech of staying strategic reserve and then Lummis raced out on stage to present the bill.
- [17:27]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Yeah, I mean, listen, Cynthia, Lummis is exactly who we want advocating for this because two things. One, she is an extremely dyed in the wool bitcoiner as opposed to what I was just saying before when it comes to, you know, Trump and most of the folks around him, you know, specifically bitcoin. But two, she also is a political animal who's proven herself good at getting things done. You know, if you take her as opposed to someone like Elizabeth Warren who's a rabid, rabid ideologue who never actually gets anything done. And you see the type of things that, that Lummis gets together with. I mean, at this point, I still think her and, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's bill is the most comprehensive attempt that I've seen to actually head on, address the real thorny issues, you know, whatever stablecoin regime who regulate, you know, who, who has regulatory oversight of bitcoin. Like all that stuff's table stakes and easy compared to the real big question, which is like, are these things friggin securities or not and how are we going to let them function? And that bill went directly at that. She went out and recruited a senator from New York on the opposite side of the aisle to figure it out together. She's someone who basically is going to both advocate for bitcoin and also know the right sort of points of compromise to get something broader done. So I think it's very bullish, not only because the thing exists, but I think she's the right person for it.
- [18:46]
Scott Melker
Yeah. And I think that they can let her spearhead that fight without having to take it head on from the White House, which by the way, is the way, as you said, this should happen. We actually want lawmakers passing laws and not just directives from the White House because they'll stick. Yep. So I'm very encouraged that this will actually be on the docket and be something that we'll be talking about for a very long time. I don't think we really even need to go back to him saying that the US will be the world capital of artificial intelligence. Unless we just want to talk about the fact that he basically dunked all over the world economic forum in their own house and said, oh my God, globalists would never want to hear.
- [19:21]
Nathaniel Whittemore
There is, there is so much dunking. My favorite moment of dunking personally as someone who was debunked by bank of America last year was when the bank of America CEO said that they didn't debunk people and he said, yes, you did. That was.
- [19:32]
Scott Melker
That was.
- [19:32]
Nathaniel Whittemore
That was.
- [19:33]
Scott Melker
You did it to my family, dude.
- [19:36]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I wanted to send him the post the PDFs of the, of the note that I got.
- [19:39]
Scott Melker
Anyways, bullying, there was no lack of offense in that speech. And so to hear crypto mentioned, and that was the first time he had said anything about crypto or bitcoin since actually becoming president to say it in that forum, I think was meaningful and then obviously followed by the executive order. And by the way, I forgot probably the biggest and most important story of the day, which also happened yesterday, which. And we'll talk about Hester Purse in General. Bye bye. SAB 121, it's not been fun. SEC.gov, staff accounting bulletin number 122, SAB 122 following up SAB 121, you got to love that. But what's crazy here is that this was supposed to be one of the executive orders that everybody was so excited about and the SEC just went ahead and took care of it themselves. And for those that don't remember, SAB 1221, we've reviewed it a million times, effectively said that banks couldn't custody bitcoin. They had to put it on the balance sheet as a liability rather than an asset. So let's say you want to custody $1 billion of Bitcoin for someone. You had to somehow find a billion dollars cash for the other side of the balance sheet. This actually led to Coinbase getting all of the custody for the ETFs indirectly, which pissed the banks off. And more importantly, this was overturned bipartisan by both Congress and the Senate and then vetoed by President Biden. So a lot of people viewing this as by far the biggest news of yesterday that just got washed out by everything that happened before it. And of course, just to tell you more about that, SEC launches crypto task force led by crypto mom Hester Purse. So this happened the day before, basically, and they're saying that crypto is going to get a lot of attention and probably more clear regulation from the sec. And we know that she believes in safe harbor and that all these things are not, you know, unregistered securities. A lot to unpack with purse and the sec.
- [21:28]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Yeah, I mean, listen, one of the things we've talked about over the last couple weeks is that we're in this transition moment between all these things that could be excited and what actually is. And this week was a good example of markets being sort of wildly all over the place based on trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't, you know, what promises were going to be kept, what weren't, which things we had to be patient and wait for. And it's interesting, I think, that you sort of see all of the beginning of the week being the big blustery executive orders then leading into these actually more subtle but more probably significant things. SEC actually creating this task force sec repealing 121. This is the sort of business end of this stick where things are actually going to get done. And I think that the more that our stories on this show end up needing to be SAB121 being repealed versus what Trump happened to say that the. The WD WEF it probably indicates it's better for the industry as a whole.
- [22:22]
Scott Melker
Yeah. News not conjecture this fact. This is happening. And a lot pointing to this being the sort of greatest obstacle to the true institutionalization of Bitcoin and the opening of the full suite of financial services like lending and yield that exist across the board. It's kind of interesting that if you look even at options trading activity, Bitcoin is a fraction of what happens on even an average stock, a Tesla or something like that. And you look at the way that people use their portfolios, especially wealthy people, to leverage it for loans. Imagine Bitcoin being in your Schwab portfolio and just being another asset that you can total up to take a loan against. That's the things that are coming once you have this safe custody and banks participating, State street, bank of New York, Mellon, Goldman, they all want to be able to hold your Bitcoin and make a hell of a lot of money, you know, around those financial services. Yep.
- [23:17]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I mean, listen, I, I think that one of the interesting questions that we'll just have to wait and see is how much, you know, wh. Which banks and financial institutions are out there just waiting for the rules to officially allow them in like this, which are sufficiently freaked out by operation choke point 2.0 that they're going to need to see some amount of time, you know, and, and more clarity than this even before they weighed in. You know, I think that, I think that we once again run the risk of assuming that as these things sort of turn around instantly, there's going to be a flood. And I don't think it's going to work exactly like that, but we are, we're firmly now in the clearing out, you know, clearing, clearing off the path for these folks to come in and, and you know, the markets will do the rest of the work creating the incentives for folks to actually come join the party.
- [24:07]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I mean, just something I overlooked when talking about the executive order because you mentioned operation choke point 2.0. Caitlin Long was very quick to point out that in that executive order he listed all of these agencies that had to take a look and would be participating, and none of them were the bank oversight committees, fdic, et cetera. She saw that as a clear fu to operation choke point 2.0 and to the banks, and they're not really getting much feedback here as to how crypto is going to shake out in the United States. So SAB 121 and the end of Operation Choke Point 2.0 and clarity on that. You really couldn't ask for more short of literally a bitcoin strategic reserve. Yep.
- [24:50]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I mean, listen, I think. I think that when the dust settles, people will feel like this was a very good week. And my guess is that, you know, rocks aside, I think what are we sitting at right now? 105,000. I think the price reflects it, right?
- [25:03]
Scott Melker
Yeah, it didn't go to 150, but 105 is a really decent price for bitcoin at the moment. And this one, you pointed out to me that actually I hadn't really noticed how to buy crypto. Mentions of bitcoin jump on social media web searches indicating potential retail interest. If you dive in more. Actually, searches outside of bitcoin specific and crypto and Solana and such are really skyrocketing. Now. I would argue that bitcoin itself is not going to be searched as heavily on Google as previous cycles because it's become a part of the vernacular. And I think everybody at least has a basic understanding. People look at what is bitcoin, Google search. How many people need to really Google that now versus four years ago or eight years ago? But still, it's a very clear indication that retail might finally be coming, which is exactly what's supposed to start at this point in the cycle. Yep.
- [25:51]
Nathaniel Whittemore
You're seeing it in the app downloads, you're seeing it. Just all the indicators are now pointing in this direction for sure.
- [25:58]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I don't know. Sort of one of our other honorable mentions that I had here, because if we're talking about people being confused and words that are being used. Well, we had Michael Saylor. The crypto renaissance has officially begun, which just yet again freaking people out. Why is he saying crypto? Crypto. It's just really funny.
- [26:20]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Yeah, I made my peace with that fight quite a while ago. But listen, again, I really do think it's nature healing to be able to care about crap like that again.
- [26:32]
Scott Melker
And then that was all the stories. But we kind of have to talk at least a little bit about Trump and Melania. I was just pulling up the Melania chart as we were doing this, so that one didn't do none too good, so to speak. But I think Trump's still sitting at about $35, right? Which puts it at a 35 billion ish, fully diluted value. I mean, $35 billion printed overnight by the 48 hours away from being President of the United States. Seems like a worthy story to at least give an honorable mention at this point.
- [27:05]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I mean, let me, let me ask you, so now that it's been a week and, you know, you've been talking about it, I presume, every day with, you know, on the, on various shows, how do you think the opinions have changed? Right? Because in, in the immediate hours following the thing, I would say it was kind of roughly divided between, oh, my God, I just made life changing money. Oh my God, I missed life changing money. Oh my God, this is the world's greatest grift, or oh my God, this is going to totally blow up in the window. Overton window on meme coins and, and signal a new era. Right? I think even John Wu had a great tweet that was like, you know, perspective. One, this is a, you know, some, some, you know, an unbelievable, you know, black eye on the field, you know, opinion. Two, this is gonna, you know, totally change the, the, the, the, the path to everything becoming tokenized and basically saying, if you find yourself in one, see how fast you can get to. Two, how do you think attitudes have changed now? Is it, is everyone just calcified in their opinions? Are people less freaked out? More freaked out, less excited? More excited? Where do you think the industry stands?
- [28:07]
Scott Melker
Well, first of all, I think as his team probably knew would happen, it's being washed out in the news cycle. And as big of a story as it was and as passionate as people were, it's just kind of becoming a thing not to talk about anymore. Hence why it wasn't even on our top five list. Listen, I take a part of everything you said there personally, and I think that it's where we're settling in. I think most people understand it was a cash grab and a grift. Besides, like hardcore Trumpers, there's very few people even in crypto who are like, yeah, this was a great idea, right? Great idea for him, but great idea for the industry, right? My first take was not great for humanity, very good for crypto, and I pretty much stick with that. I think if they hadn't have launched Melania, whoever did that, however that was done, the sentiment would be different because I think that leaned much harder towards gratuitous cash grab and also effectively halved the price of Trump. So then the argument at that point became, well, look how Many people just lost money, which I don't really know the case, I haven't dug into that. But I think that right now people have gone back to being really excited about the governor being off and it being all systems go for the crypto industry and the fact that if the President's launching a meme coin, that's a very good signal that that is going to be the fact. So I think, you know, people forgive him. They knew that it would get washed out in the cycle, that he would be forgiven. He's probably going to make billions of dollars on this with time. But I do think it's a signal that people are safe to come back to the US and go nuts in crypto.
- [29:35]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I think that the, it very clearly draws the line between NFTs and meme coins as community affinity tokens. Right. You know, because meme coins have always sort of been like the latter day version of, you know, this is a thing that organizes this community that happens to have financial stakes in the same way that NFTs were. But I mean, this is, this is that on steroids. Right. So it'll be interesting to see how it, how it shapes the way that we think about meme coins going forward. I agree though. It's definitely, certainly says it's open season, so, you know, enjoy it while it lasts.
- [30:07]
Scott Melker
Sacks on that in that Fox Business interview very clearly said, you know, NFTs and meme tokens are collectibles. Right. And that's obviously parroting the narrative that if you give a disclaimer, which Trump did on the website, you know, this is not meant for investment purposes, this is to support Trump and then you get to call it a collectible. But I would make the argument there's not a single person on this planet that bought that thing without the expectation of profit and just bought it because they liked, you know, to support. But listen, the law is the law. Regulation is going to be regulation. Disclaimers are disclaimers. I have no problem with people participating as they see fit. But I mean, just being honest, like this is obviously something that people are aggressively trading for profit because it's being promoted by the struck most powerful man in the free world. It's somewhere in that gray area between collectible and security.
- [30:59]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I think it's a great reminder to those who would be opponents of crypto that the appropriate way to try to build guardrails around this field is not the endlessly replaceable regulation by enforcement regime of Gary Gensler. Because that man hadn't even the door hadn't closed on his ass, leaving the building before everything that he cared about was utterly and unfathomably undone. And would that have been the same if he had actually taken the time to engage and build laws where these sort of things like.
- [31:31]
Scott Melker
No.
- [31:31]
Nathaniel Whittemore
But instead, he spent all of his time going after Coinbase for some crap, you know? So I hope he feels good about his legacy, because it doesn't exist anymore, to your point.
- [31:41]
Scott Melker
I mean, it was annihilated in a tweet, like one tweet in the launch of a meme coin, and it exposed everything that was wrong with the entire previous administration in sec. So if that's what we get out of it, I'm here for it. Like, if the silver lining of this grift has to be that Gary Gensler is crying somewhere in a corner, I'm here for it.
- [32:01]
Nathaniel Whittemore
I hope they send him a ledger that has a bunch of Trump on it.
- [32:05]
Scott Melker
Melania Trump. Sorry. There you go. All right, guys. Wow, what a. What a week to try to unpack. I can't even imagine we'll have another week like that, but never know. We'll see you next Friday, guys. Of course. Follow nlw. Listen to the breakdown. Did you talk about the meme coin? Every day.
- [32:21]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Just. Just on Tuesday.
- [32:22]
Scott Melker
I think better than me. You did better than me here. He's a real professional. Consummate. All right, guys, that's all we got for you today. We will see you next week. Thanks, man. Bye. Let's do.
- [32:47]
Nathaniel Whittemore
Let's dope.