← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall every single weekday here on X. I hope that all of you are having a wonderful day. Just waiting for Dave to jump up soon, hopefully. We've got a great panel today, as always, and quite a bit to talk about before we do get started. We have an awesome sponsor today which is Zero G. We've been telling you about them on a near daily basis and will be for a while. AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. 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 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 Zero G. AI. That's the number zero, lowercase G dot AI. So let's dive into it right now. Whale Stack, BTC and eth. While retail hesitates, we're seeing massive inflows to start the year into ETFs across the board. Actually, not just crypto ETFs, but Bitcoin and ETFs in particular, doing huge numbers especially obviously, IBIT leading the way as usual. We've kind of seen a phenomenon, at least yesterday, where we didn't get really the same market patterns that we usually got in the US Open, where we saw a significant dip. It seems that maybe the story here is that a lot of the selling pressure that we saw through December has abated and seems to be minimizing. So whether it was, you know, the conspiracy theory that some entity blew up on October 10th and was a forced seller and had been basically systematically selling into the market, whether that has stopped, whether this was just, you know, December was down because the holidays and people weren't at their deaths and they were taking, you know, some losses to write off against their gains tax loss. Harvesting a lot of narratives, but seemingly a lot of the immediate selling pressure that we saw for a very long time is diminishing. Gaurav, you're looking at this stuff all day. How do you view the market right now? And also, good morning and happy New Year, buddy. I feel like I really teed that one up and got let down by my friend. Any of the other few speakers here want to jump up and let me know what they're thinking about the market right now. We've only had a few of you up here, so please, somebody bail me out after that very non embarrassing moment. Nobody's using it, Ryan.
- [02:39]
B
Yeah, I'll jump in.
- [02:40]
A
Happy New Year, Ryan. My dear friend, Ryan. Happy New Year.
- [02:44]
B
I love you. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, bitcoin's doing what bitcoin does and people sell off towards the end of the year and then we start seeing people buy back in. I've been dropping the the charts into my AI model every day and it just keeps giving me between 70 and 80% upside on, you know, just saying that this is accumulation, accumulation and we're just, you know, running sideways and we're going to be eventually going back up into the spring. So it looks like we're just following typical market patterns.
- [03:27]
C
Right. Man, don't you know you can't trust those AI models, Ryan. They lie, bro. They lie. So be careful. Be careful with that, brother.
- [03:34]
B
Be careful.
- [03:35]
C
They learn new patterns and they just want to make you feel good, bro. Be careful with those things.
- [03:40]
B
Everything lies to us. I might as well believe something that makes me feel good, you know?
- [03:44]
A
Yeah. Where are we at with humans right now, Adam? We are. Okay.
- [03:48]
C
I'll give you the hue, I'll give you the human perspective. I think it's a lot of it was everybody was expecting, you know, the kind of year end sell off, tax harvesting type of stuff. It feels like, you know, Venezuela and what's going on over there makes people bullish for whatever kind of crazy reason. Just the general vibe sentiment gives, gives a bullish indicator that that's the way it feels right now. It's turned a little bit bullish. Not super bullish, but it definitely like feels.
- [04:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean to that end, like this is one of the first times where we've seen kind of a renewed bullishness not only in bitcoin, but altcoins as well. Right. And I mean I pointed this out yesterday for those who are chart technicians and actually care, you know, in the last three or four days, most of the majors have re flipped the 50 moving average on the daily to support from resistance. We were below them for months, you know, really since October. I mean, XRP flipped it at, you know, two boxes now trading at 236. I'm just popping some charts here.
- [04:44]
B
Here.
- [04:45]
A
Salana flipped it about 130. It's at 143 E flipped the 50 MA. I'm looking at the weekly here. Let me look on the daily at about 3,000 bucks. It's trading, you know, 10% almost above that at about 3,300. Interestingly, I pointed this out yesterday as well. ETH is the only major I can find. That's also back above the 50ma on the weekly chart. The rest are way below. And bitcoin, obviously, every time it's broken below the 50 max, you see a retest of it as resistance, which is why a lot of people are looking at a move back up to 100, 101 before a decision is decided is really made, but then back down to the 200, which, you know, nobody wants to hear about that on bitcoin because the 200 ma on bitcoin is currently at $57,000. So I don't know, we have a lot of consensus that we're going to be going to 57. But either way, seeing Ethereum kind of lead and get back above that makes it a little bit more likely that bitcoin won't repeat or that other things won't and can get back above kind of the 50 weekly. But I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the majors on altcoins actually have seen some really big moves over the last week, and that's not something that we've generally been seeing, even with these small bitcoin moves to the upside. So I think echoes the point that there's a renewed optimism. Adam.
- [06:04]
C
Well, if you saw Vitalik's post yesterday, you know, every once in a while he'll get back to his roots and just do a really bullish post on Ethereum. And if you didn't check it out yesterday, check his post yesterday. Just leaning into what Ethereum is at its core. And I think, you know, for me that maybe I retweeted, I was like, gez, once in a while he still can hit bangers. And, and this was like just to the core of what we're doing here, I think was bullish for a lot of kind of Ethereum bulls like myself. So that was nice to see yesterday.
- [06:33]
A
Last time I saw him was at Paris Blockchain Week. I was hosting and which I don't normally do, and I, I introduced him and he went on stage and sang in Japanese for the first seven minutes.
- [06:45]
C
Yeah, we need less of that, more about Corb. I mean, it's just, you know, Vitalik goes off on such rants about just crazy, kind of what I would consider kind of crazy, kind of left, left winning stuff. Leaning stuff. But you know, at, at his core obviously he's. He's the goat. Or near goat maybe number two.
- [07:03]
A
Yeah. So obviously I guess we kind of just touched on the.
- [07:08]
D
Wait, where was I in that dinner?
- [07:09]
A
Scott, you're back. It's good to know you're here, Gorav, because you may have missed at the very show where I asked you very specifically about the market and what it's looking like. I said Happy New Year to you. I called you my brother and you left me just floating here like to the surface.
- [07:28]
D
Oh, sorry man. Sorry.
- [07:31]
A
Thanks.
- [07:31]
D
Happy New Year, man. Happy New Year.
- [07:33]
A
Happy New Year.
- [07:34]
D
Maybe you all have an amazing 2026 prosperity. But more than that, clarity.
- [07:40]
A
Wishing that to everyone, clarity is clarity. To be that as like a joke with the clarity act coming or the.
- [07:47]
D
Actual kind, it's the minus AI whatever is left in your. In your conscious, in average human conscious, minus AI infused hallucination. That's clarity.
- [08:00]
A
There you go. It says. So I'm reading on the inflows here. Global crypto inflows in 2025, just shy of 2024. So last year wasn't as good, but we're starting off 2026 exceptionally well. Obviously we had strategy and bit mine, both buying more bitcoin and Ethereum. I guess we dug into this briefly, Dave. The Venezuela bitcoin story. I still have not seen any proof of this, but it's definitely catching steam. Was on cnbc. So whether true or not, it's becoming a narrative.
- [08:33]
E
Rumors tend to move ahead of facts. I mean we, we all understand that. Look it, it. When you get market setups like this, you, we always tend to find narratives afterwards. But the truth is, is the market setup is ridiculously strong. You know, we. We all know what happened. We know the story. We know bitcoin is still ridiculously cheap based, you know, compared to its network. We know that gold and silver are still moving. We know bitcoin tends to lag. You know, it's. We've seen so much good news on the bitcoin side. You and I can't even, you know, we would literally spend the rest of this spaces just chronicling all the news that you would think would have propelled bitcoin higher. Yet it was sold last year and we understand why. And so yeah, we're people who are desperate to find a story, are going to latch on to stories. But the truth is that you really don't need a story, you know, to get to see that the demand is larger than the supply. At least right now, as we sit in January with the tax law selling over, with the new year being flipped. I think it'll get interesting again as we get to more interesting technical levels. But the truth is that it could be a very big story in the future. Right. If in fact the US is able to establish its bitcoin reserve without having to buy it, yeah, that would be a big deal. But who knows? There's also just the outrage from this small amount of selling on the Samray wallet, which I think is a really interesting story because we had outgoing Senator Lummis basically chastising the DOJ for selling, you know, the, the small amount that they sold. And I think that that's interesting because it's kind of showing you on the political side, you know, when, when senators are willing to, to chastise the administration, you know, that that's kind of meaningful because I do think that, that the, the path of being able to seize bad guys, bitcoin is something the US Is going to be aggressive about. And so that lends credence to this story. That's the only, only other point I'd make there.
- [10:41]
A
Right.
- [10:41]
D
I think, yeah, sorry, I was going.
- [10:45]
B
To say the one Venezuela client I can think of was years ago, I had some guys approach me about investing and helping them set up a large bitcoin mine in Venezuela. And I. And this was like a decade ago. And I remember hearing about it thinking like, that sounds like a terrible idea. But I know that they went ahead with it and they raised a ton of money and there are very large bitcoin mines that were set up in Venezuela. So, you know, there's tie ins there, there's a huge amount of energy. There's.
- [11:21]
A
Remember the Petro token? They had a token.
- [11:24]
C
Do you remember that?
- [11:25]
A
Like, it seems to be a footnote in crypto history when, like that was the first national adoption of crypto is that they launched a token Venezuela.
- [11:34]
B
They were ahead of their time.
- [11:36]
A
I mean, nobody would be surprised if in some way, shape or form they were mining bitcoin with effectively unlimited free energy. Right. I mean, that's the perfect setup.
- [11:45]
B
It's a great way to get around embargoes and sanctions.
- [11:50]
C
I mean, the great thing. Ryan, you're probably smart to pass on that, right? It was like, I heard about that going around as well. It was like, same great works, great. Until they come and just, you know, the municipality comes and takes your rigs.
- [12:02]
B
Right. It's just we, yeah, we called it the AK47 tax. Everything was fun and games until they, they came in and collected their dues. And it was the same reason why we passed up a lot of opportunities in the Middle east as well. Just there's a lot of unforeseen fees and taxes that will come due.
- [12:22]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's no shortage of stories about Venezuela, quote, unquote, nationalizing private assets. So by the way, the United States, California is proposing doing the same thing with the billionaire tax for anybody who's been paying attention. So for the first time in history, something may actually pass in this country where they just add up your private property and take a quote unquote tax on it. I know this is a total aside, but if they do it to billionaires, that's like 9 trillion. I think that's like 9 trillion of the money in the United States. But I think the rest of the population, the middle class, has about 170 trillion. So if you think that's stops at billionaires when they do it, you're sadly mistaken. So, yeah, I would just pay attention.
- [13:04]
E
You're very right. I just want to be really clear. They're calling it that, but the actual rule does not, repeat, not limit their ability to attack even, even the, the middle class. It doesn't matter.
- [13:17]
A
Dave, are you, are you daring to imply that somebody in the United States would misdirect the population with the name of legislation? Because that's insane. Because obviously the Inflation Reduction act massively reduced inflation.
- [13:32]
E
I mean, look, it's funny. I mean, you and I have both, I think, I don't know, I thought I was more aggravated and angry and unfiltered, but you're starting to follow me down that rabbit hole, dude.
- [13:42]
A
You know, I hang out with you too much. It's your fault.
- [13:45]
E
It's, you know, the amount of bullshit that we're seeing from politicians and by the way, it is on both sides. But it's clearly, I mean, look, we saw the worst. I, I think maybe the single worst speech ever given in Will. Will in the, in the rearview mirror of history in the United States was almost certainly Mamdani's acceptance speech. Because anybody who uses the word warmth of collectivism, if you've read Lenin, if you've read Mao, and I have both of you know, they're both of their signature books. They both use the same language. Stalin said more or less the same thing. So, you know, if you're going to want to be aligned there, good luck with that and we'll see how it all works out. But, you know.
- [14:27]
A
I don't know what her job, I Don't have it.
- [14:30]
E
The housing advisor.
- [14:31]
A
Yeah, it's housing advisor. Where she said, we'll transition from treating property as an individual good to a collective good. Fights especially will be impacted.
- [14:39]
E
Well, you know, it's funny and I, and we say a lot of hands. So I want to get to, I want to get to them. But I will tell the story of our first, our first, our second nanny. You know, when my kids were growing up, she had come from Soviet Georgia and she talked about how her family's house was, was taken. And they were basically told by the party, hey, you know, we're gonna let you live in your, in your, in your house. If you, if as long as you take these other eight people into it, you know, and it's like, and, and that is literally what, what. That is the same philosophy. It's, it's the exact philosophy that Mamdani is espousing and people don't realize what it means yet, but we'll see. He won't legally or constitutionally be able to do that, but the fact that he wants to do it is ridiculous anyway.
- [15:22]
A
Right, but he's just a mayor. Right? I do want to go to the hands. He's just a mayor. But when you start seeing, you know, initiatives from California, it's the fourth largest economy in the world, you know, those things tend to leak over. And it's not the only place we've seen these kind of things. I mean, we remember we had Jed Yellen talking about an unrealized capital gains.
- [15:39]
E
Tax, but unconstitutional at the federal level. They can't do it, so. Yeah, well, they could do a lot of shit. Anyway, I saw your hand first, then.
- [15:48]
F
Ryan, hey, first of all, happy New Year to everybody and thanks for letting, giving me the opportunity to speak here. And I think this is an incredibly crazy proposal. I'm seeing the California, you know, the proposals and I'm seeing some counter proposals from some people saying that, oh, we should probably audit the government. And if we audit the government and if everything's going good, then maybe we can do something like this. But it's not really about how efficient the government is. It's just that you cannot take private property. It's insane that somebody would even think that that would work in modern day United States. And the fact, and the very fact that even there is a discussion that this can happen, especially in California where the Silicon Valley is present, is scary. And on top of that, I also want to make a point about the Venezuela situation. I have, I have really good friends in Venezuela who have told me personally about a lot of crazy stories that go on there and how the socialist regime has sort of like, you know, completely. You know, it's. It's over. The. The livelihood is completely gone over there. There is really no private sector. It's horrible. You guys might know who Daniel DiMartino is. He's a Manhattan Institute analyst. He's somebody whose family actually fleed from Venezuela. But the reaction to what President Trump has done in this case, especially from Democrats and people like Bernie Sanders and Zoran and where they've completely gone tone deaf to the celebrations that the Venezuelans are actually going through, and they've actually started attacking the Trump admin for doing the right thing, that is save Venezuela from even worsening conditions is really scary of what's coming for the United States because people simply believe that the policies in Venezuela is something that we can sort of gain from in the US and sort of apply in certain ways. That's why they call themselves democratic socialists and so on and so forth. But what the funny part is, whenever they criticize these governments and whenever they criticize United States actions, they completely forget that you're talking about the socialism. That's okay, but you completely forget that the democracy is gone. I think somebody also pointed that out yesterday. I don't remember who it was. So if you're a democratic socialist, you're only obsessing over the socialist part, but you don't care about the fact that they're not democratic. And it's dangerous. I think the previous speaker actually brought up a great point about Mamdani sort of, you know, leading this charge. And it's very dangerous for the United States if this sort of policies continue. So. Yeah, thank you. Thank you once again. And I just wanted to make my point there.
- [18:42]
E
Yeah.
- [18:44]
A
I think we had Ryan and Adam. So go ahead, Ryan.
- [18:47]
B
Oh, man, I'm on mute here, getting all worked up.
- [18:53]
A
Wow.
- [18:54]
B
What did we think was going to happen with this country when we have the education system the way we have it and we're teaching the kids way were teaching them. And now we have literally pep rallies in front of Bernie Sanders with a bunch of people chanting tax the rich. I mean, where on earth has socialism ever worked? I mean, this is the whole ethos of why I got into crypto and why I got into bitcoin was to avoid these people. It seems like in this country, government is only best avoided because it's just. Even though we have Trump and we have all this cool policy that's coming out, the federal level we have states like California, which it's just a complete shit show. I'm sorry, it's like some of the worst crime stats in the country, where I have a warehouse in California that was broken into over the weekend. Thousands of dollars of stuff stolen. It's just constant. And yet they just want to keep taxing people into oblivion. And then we do something good. Removing a cartel leader of a foreign country that has serious security risks for our country. And now the Democrats are lining up to try to defend the cartels. It's absolutely insane to me. The one thing I hope is, I hope Venezuela gets back on its feet and its economy recovers. Maybe it'll become a US territory and we can have another tax refuge. But for now, you know, viva la Puerto Rico. Because, I mean, the US Is a show.
- [20:30]
C
The only thing I would add to that, Ryan, is that, you know, living in, in Central America myself, I know a lot of Venezuelans, what tends to happen, and we're, we're seeing it right now with California is all, all the kind of best and brightest and the go getters and the entrepreneurs and the people who actually build stuff, they flee, they get out.
- [20:48]
A
And it's happened every time in history.
- [20:51]
C
It happens every time. And so without an external force to change things is very difficult, near impossible to change internally. So, you know, I'm not sure good or bad, but I know a lot of Venezuelans and I know they're pretty, pretty excited about what's happening.
- [21:06]
A
I mean, if we're talking specifically about the billionaire tax, it's actually something I was writing about this morning because I was just kind of fuming about it. And I read a daily newsletter. Obviously I haven't published anything yet, but like, I was doing some research in France. There's a lot of precedent for this. But France tried this in the 80s, I think it was a 1 to 1%, 5% annual tax on net worth, like above a very modest threshold there. It was like one and a half million dollars or something. And so like on paper it was like, we'll raise several billion euros a year, but what actually happened is that $200 billion in net worth fled the country. Like all the rich people just left because it was insanity. And income tax receipts fell like investment declined and they gave up after two decades of trying it in 2018. So, I mean, it's not like there's a historical precedent for the fact that this doesn't work. Like, if they do this in California, those people go to Florida taxes, and they collect less taxes.
- [21:57]
B
You can't treat your citizens like indentured servants and expect them just to stick around like, it's just absolutely insane.
- [22:06]
A
Dater.
- [22:09]
G
Yeah, thanks for giving me the word. First of all, happy New Year to everyone. I'm not from the US But I have a strong opinion also on the move that was made by Trump's administration currently in Venezuela. Whereas I would also say that the current administration in Venezuela with Maduro.
- [22:31]
A
It'S.
- [22:31]
G
Good that he's taken, taken away from that position and that he has to face justice. However, I do believe that putting Delsey Rodriguez in the place currently and the whole move, legally speaking, is questionable at best. And I heard also that people in Venezuela currently, they are mostly, it seems, happy with the intervention because the situation was already very bad over there. However, I do believe that if we now want to see real changes, if the US Wants to see real changes here, then what needs to be done is a bigger, a bigger move, so to say, than just taking out currently. The, the current, the current system is not just consisting of Maduro, let me phrase it like that. So, and putting Delsey Rodriguez, who is already in line with him, in that place is not the move, I believe.
- [23:31]
A
So she's his left, I mean, she's his left hand, right. She's a part of the government. So I, I don't know if you guys saw it. I don't know if you guys saw it, but, and listen, this is like very temporary, but her, I mean, she was sworn in by her brother with Maduro's son overseeing. And listen, that's just like optics and hilarious. But I mean, it's, this is not a wild change and I don't know the context, but Trump even said that Bachado, who was, you know, elected by more than 70% of the vote, did not have the respect, and I think he meant of the current government and maybe it would destabilize things further at this moment, but that she was not, you know, didn't have the respect to lead at the moment. I think the overarching thing here, and Dave, we've discussed this to death and I know you're going to jump in, is that like everybody agrees it's good that Maduro is gone? I think there's a lot of question marks as to what the future, what the future will look like. And I very strongly believe that the future of Venezuela should be determined by the Venezuelans.
- [24:27]
E
Yeah. And I think that that funny part is, is everyone agrees with that, including Rubio. Right. You know, who's the one who's whispering in Trump's ear most, for most of this stuff. The, the, what he said about Machado was interesting because she, he there, there was a really good analysis this morning. Basically the, the thought process in D.C. is that she's unreasonable, unyielding and she wasn't even the person who ran. I mean she installed somebody else to run. They want real elections and a real transfer of power. That's what we want to try to facilitate. And the, the hope now it is a hope, it is not a policy but the hope is that the US's power can continue to push the, the criminals out and put them on better behavior to actually hold real elections. It is non trivial. And, and the, the thing that, that, that's important and I'll always keep saying it is remember Panama? The same thing happened with Nora and it was a total shit show for a while. It was absolute chaos and we don't want to repeat that. Right. So yes, it needs to be done by the Venezuelan people and they're going to need some help and the question is what level of help that will be. This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces today and to rush to judgment. Now this is going to take months before we have a really clear picture and every day people are going to be yelling about stuff in and out. So I just, I think it's important to understand these things don't happen immediately, but the overall goal is yeah, it should be Venezuelan people's sovereignty. That, that is undeniably what they want to do anyway. Adam, I see your hand up. Tell me why I'm wrong.
- [26:00]
A
Yeah, further down this rabbit hole, Adam, then I want to kind of just tie it back to bitcoin, but I would love your Go ahead open comments. I'm just saying. So we don't, so we don't become a politics show which I started having.
- [26:11]
C
Worked in humanitarian aid for the better part of half a decade. It was what you realize it's very difficult to do these things, almost basically impossible. So it is going to be a shit show. Let's hope, honestly hope that some Venezuelans return to Venezuela to help figure this out. Because if you're just looking at the income, my only feeling would be if you're just looking at the incumbents to get this right, it is going to be quite a shit show with just basically US control over the country. And you know, maybe that's not the worst thing in the short term, but I, I think we can all agree that's not long term. Where we want this to go.
- [26:47]
A
Yeah. I don't even think the implication is that the incumbents would be in control. I think the implication is that Trump would, or the United States government, I should say, because this is not unique to Trump. The United States has been doing this since the 60s, or you could even go say at the 40s, but is that they. They put her in as a puppet, right. And she's effectively like, just. Just works for our government. I mean, even said, like, if you don't do what we want, your fate will be worse than Maduro's.
- [27:12]
B
Right.
- [27:12]
A
I mean, literally said that. So I don't think, you know, it's really her that would be in power. But what do I know? But either way, I mean, Dave, you kind of made the point yesterday. I want to let you echo it again. I don't know if, if you've changed anything, but, like, if they really have 600,000 Bitcoin, which is a lot talk about a strategy level stack, and that becomes strategic bitcoin reserve in the United States, what does that mean?
- [27:36]
E
Well, I mean, the point, I want to be clear, if Venice, if it is the result of illegal drug money being laundered into Bitcoin, and 600,000 just seems like a really big number because it would have to be a lot of different wallets. I mean, we have pretty good forensic accounting and the FBI is pretty good about going after and finding stuff. But be that as it may, if there's a substantial amount of bitcoin that is a result of illegal drug activity being laundered, the US Is going to seize that. It's not going back to Venezuela. It will become part of our bitcoin reserve, full stop. If, on the other hand, it was looted from the Venezuelan people, then that is going to be an interesting call. My suspicion is that, and it depends who becomes who goes into power, because the opposition. Say what you want about Machado is she is. She's a bitcoiner. Right. You know, so, you know, they would probably hold it. So it's not at all clear who would hold it. What is very clear, though, is it's. It's bitcoin that might have been spent or converted to dollars or something else that won't be. So undeniably, you're taking a significant amount of bitcoin and you're taking it off the market one way or the other for at least the intermediate term. And so there's no way to look at this other than bullish. Because if you thought that the criminal syndicate was going to be able to get this, take this and convert it and sell it, much like the continuation of last year's sales. That's not happening. So that is undeniably good. That's the most important thing here. Everything else is total speculation. And I hate engaging that sort of arm waving. I mean, Adam, I saw you gave the 100%. I mean, that makes sense to you, right?
- [29:19]
C
100%, right.
- [29:22]
E
So to me, Scott, that's the biggest story here. The other big thing about Bitcoin that matters is if you start thinking about what does it mean, you know, that the US and, and you know, let's be cynical for a second. What does it mean? Does it make people believe it's more important to have their own. And, and what's going on in California and a lot of other things. And what mommy's talking about, is this the kind of thing that narrative and rhetorically makes bitcoin self custody feel more appealing, makes an asset that can't be seized better? The answer of course is yes. I mean, it doesn't mean everyone's going to jump into self custody, but it's narratives and it's these sorts of things take time. And you don't have to persuade too many people in the world that having some of your wealth in a wallet, hopefully not a wallet where your data has been leaked, but that's a totally different story and it's one we should talk about. A crypto town call, by the way, is what happened with Ledger. But at any event, the narrative is important and the narrative doesn't make. These narratives don't make immediate price moves. But long term, it's hard to say it's anything other than constructive.
- [30:33]
A
Yeah, I agree with all that. And I, I mean, we have another Ledger hack, right? I, I'm blanking and I don't have it pulled up in front of me on the entity that was actually hacked, you know, via Ledger. But it's a whole lot of data being hacked. And you have to realize this isn't a threat to your assets on your Ledger device. But if your information is giving out there is being put out there, that it makes you much more susceptible to phishing or some kind of other scam. And when you consider the fact that they had a previous massive hack, you know, if you can go back to what year was that in? Do you guys remember? It was 21 or something. I, you know, that they had the massive, massive data breach. I mean, if you can, you know, take, especially with AI now, my God, if you can take those two data sets and align them and say, hey, who's still here in 2025 that was here in 2021 as a customer and go attack those people. Just such a honey pot.
- [31:30]
E
Yeah, it's. It. It is. It is definitely troubling. It also makes you want to be. I mean, look, most people with. With an ounce of common sense don't have your seed phrases in the same place as your wallet, and your wallet is not necessarily where you live, and if it is where you live, it's in a place where people aren't gonna be able to find it all that easily, and yada, yada, yada, and then you have, you know, stand your ground laws in certain states and other sort of things. But the truth is that wrench attacks is. It's a real attack vector. Right. And phishing attacks are real attack vectors. People can be fooled, and it becomes something that you have to worry about, and it will always be that way until, you know, there's consistent. Yeah. Ways of protecting yourself, Gator.
- [32:15]
G
Yeah, absolutely. Agreed. And I think if you look at what is currently the issue of these hacks, it's. It's the data that is being collected, and it's not just. Not just attacking the wallets or hacking into the wallets, but it's also the safety of the people holding the crypto assets and being found out where they live and being abducted. I mean, also in the Netherlands, where I live, you see this more and more often, that people get kidnapped or get tortured sometimes even by family to give up their seed phrases and such. And as soon as people from outside find out that you hold a large amount of crypto, you have a target on your back. So it's not just, you know, the sensitivity of your wallet and the seed phrase and keeping that safe. It's also about your details as a crypto holder, if you're a larger holder of the assets.
- [33:07]
A
Yeah. I mean, Ryan, you've got to have some strong opinions on data breaches in this case.
- [33:13]
B
So for public record, I own no bitcoin. I have no crypto.
- [33:24]
C
Only. Right, brother.
- [33:25]
B
Oh. Oh, man. You know, Yeah, I only hold Celsius token. So just. Just. Just saying, you know, do it that way, you may. You know, it doesn't matter how seasoned you are, there's always something new. Even the last two years, I can't even tell you how much crypto I've seen drained, looted from new attacks that. That I hadn't even seen before. And it's just getting crazier and crazier. With the way you can layer transactions in some of these contracts on base. Even Google Adwords, you have to be careful. There are advertisers that will spoof being Aerodrome or Cowswap or Uniswap and they'll pay enough in the ads to be listed number one on Google. So if you Google Uniswap or Aerodrome or something, the top ad is, the top search result is actually a scraper website, it's not the real defi website. And that's taken, you know, millions of dollars from people and Google doesn't do anything about it. You know, you can report them. You know, I tracked one of these scammers back to their, their address in Estonia and I reached out to the local police department and I gave them all of the evidence of the attack, the Google AdWords account, copies of the ads that they were running, like even like the person's name and her address and said this is who stole the money. And they did nothing about it. Google didn't do anything about it. So you just have to be incredibly careful. And it's. Ah, man. Yeah, there's a lot.
- [35:11]
C
That's one of those. The Google one is really people. Most people don't even know about that. I've known about that for years. I watched a friend of mine lose 30 grand in Bitcoin literally through that. I was like, wait, what did you just search Google for? Whatever freaking exchange he was using. And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, don't ever do that. And literally the day before his, his, his wallet had gotten drained that way. I mean, it's just, it's crazy, that sort of thing, like Google, I think it's, I think it's in the hundreds of millions, maybe even pushing like a billion dollars. Like that sort of scam is so deep and I know so many people have lost money to that. But just to get back to this Ledger thing, if you're receiving an email, I mean, I don't trust any emails anymore. I think they're all scams now. I basically don't even use email anymore because it's, it's all I have friends who've already gotten emails for from the Ledger hack. So yeah, head on a swivel there.
- [36:05]
A
Yeah, it's just, I think a further reminder that if you're going to be your own bank, you need to be exceptionally careful. And that's always been a mantra in crypto. But you know, self custody is not easy either, so. And by the way, I mean if you're Using a ledger. You're someone who believes in self custody. So I think it's a pretty complicated thing to solve. I want to pivot to one other thing. It wasn't in the news that we had teed up but it's something that I think is absolutely huge. And Dave, I would love your take on it. I'm sure you saw the news from Morgan Stanley that Morgan Stanley is filing for a bitcoin trust and a Solana trust. Both news. I think that was broken yesterday or early this morning.
- [36:45]
E
Look, the most important thing about this news and all of the other news stories are everybody who believes that somehow bitcoin and crypto are be going to be fought by the banks and banned if There's a president AOC in 28 are out of their effing minds. You know the banks effectively, yeah, they want, they're going to want to control it. They're not going to want Solana and you know, they're not going to want Defi to take, get rid of their, their subsidy that they get on bank deposits. They're not going to want to see Defi take out their cartels and financ financing businesses. But 100%, all the banks are looking to figure out how to make money from it. It also tells you a lot about the likelihood of clarity passing and regulatory clarity. It may not be the regulations we want, but it won't be kick crypto out of the United States. That ship has sailed. And the fact that people don't understand that and that there's four year cycle people who believe that this delay in getting this done, it means that you got to wait 18 months before you'll see crypto prices do anything. I think they're out of their freaking minds. I mean, you know, it's just, it doesn't matter. It's the number of pieces of news that tell you and look, I work for Morgan Stanley and for almost 10 years, you know, I work for Citigroup or Salomon Brothers through Citigroup for 14 years. I, I understand how these management policies work. At the top end they'll lobby for what they want for sure but at the same time if they see a trend, they're going to jump on it. And this is just more confirmation of that, Scott, Nothing more. Yeah, Ryan, or, or Gator, I think your hand may have been up first. I'm sorry.
- [38:29]
G
I don't think it was raised.
- [38:33]
E
X spaces again. Ryan, go.
- [38:35]
G
Yeah, it's been relating a little bit.
- [38:37]
B
I'll, I'll just say you Know, since I don't invest in bitcoin, but if I did invest in bitcoin, if I happen to hold any type of bitcoin.
- [38:44]
A
You don't mind it either. I know that for a fact and.
- [38:46]
B
I don't, I don't mind. I definitely do not mind it whatsoever. So. But if I did or if I was interested in this area at all, a key indicator and to dovetail off what Dave was saying, when banks start making any type of move towards mining, then it will be a green light that they actually figured it out. Until then they're just, they're kind of going with their consultants and they're going into traditional products but they're still looking for ways to control it. Once they take a step towards mining, it'll show that they actually understand where the transaction processing happens and they're going to for real control.
- [39:28]
A
Yeah. Dave, did you see any other hands? Because I don't know what was up.
- [39:32]
E
No, I just see the phantom hand from Gator. I mean look, I think that the other thing that's worth talking about and it's too bad Gorov's not here. He wanted us to talk about altcoins is if you watched this morning, it was quite interesting that yesterday bitcoin just outperformed but today Ethereum is outperforming and alter out performing including our favorite XRP and you know, and Solana, although Solana is not quite as much as it was earlier today. And I think that that animal spirits in, in the crypto world are I think at this point ready and waiting for something to happen which is very, very different, you know, than it's been in the last. Whatever we all. It also looks like we are just about to finally break the longest streak in history of being in fear or extreme fear in sentiment. All of this, you know, coming almost exactly three months after the October 10th I think is important from a market psychology point of view. It really, it. Anyone who's gone through crypto winters before, it feels like the time period is compressed. But if we had a three month crypto winter or a two and a half month crypto winter, it feels like you green shoots are there and there's money that's, that's ready to rotate and you know, we'll see what happens. Silver reclaimed, that's the other thing that's worth talking about because a lot of momentum money has gone into silver. The fact that it's reclaimed the 80 level post CME, increasing margin requirements which by the way, you know, I'll take, I'LL give myself flowers. I, I told you would happen. And is, is a big deal. It's telling you the power of that momentum and that momentum money is coming from the contract for differences market, which is a close cousin of the crypto derivatives market. And so there are a lot of animal spirits out there and people who think there's no money that could come into this sector if in fact the all clear is is is perceived by people. You just, you're just wiling, you know, it's just there, there is money on the sidelines and we don't know when that money will come in. My guess is it will come in after a grinding rally higher that makes people disbelieve, disbelieve until it's a. They capitulate on the upside and we'll see what happens. But that it feels like that's what's starting today.
- [41:49]
A
Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, going back to just specifically the Morgan Stanley thing, it's once again and we talk about this endlessly is not that it in and of itself is a huge piece of news. It aligned with what d' Agostino from Coinbase actually said on NBC yesterday, which is that every corporation, institution, every everywhere has a crypto plan now. Right, right. Very distinct and definitive direction that things are going and you can't, you know, put the back in the horse, so to speak. I mean everybody is going to have a crypto.
- [42:20]
E
And he has a really, really good seat for seeing it. I mean, for those who don't know, John d', Agostino, he was at ema, you know, before he joined Coinbase, you know, a big asset management, you know, think tank organization. So he is a really good see to understand what's going on. And he's right and that, that does matter and look, it could change if something really horrible happened. But the truth is that it is not the situation. There is more money likely to come into the sector one way or another than is anticipated by people in the crypto space. Because people in the crypto space don't understand how small crypto is relative to the financial system.
- [43:06]
A
Yeah, 100%. I see, you know, Gator giving the hundreds. But if anybody else has any specific thoughts on this. Dave, are there any other real big topics on the docket? I mean, you know, I think we've covered most of it. I find it interesting that crypto inflows in 25 actually ended up being less than 24, but they were starting 26 really well. Interesting.
- [43:29]
B
But.
- [43:31]
E
Ryan.
- [43:35]
A
I don't even See Ryan.
- [43:36]
E
On stage, Ryan raised his hand and then, and then went boom.
- [43:40]
A
I'm gonna assume he got rugged and it was not purpose.
- [43:43]
E
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we all know he, he, he went to, to make sure that there was no mining being done. But yeah, I mean, you know, when we get days like today, I mean, let's face it from the macro perspective, we're going to get the, the real data and we'll, you know, it's only Tuesday, but so we have to kind of COVID Tomorrow you'll see adp, but Friday, the employment report is going to get everyone's, you know, one way or another is going to be a big deal for people. The, the one observation I was going to make about crypto markets and it is that the expectations of volatility are still farther out and, and if people are, are have very low volatility expectations in the short run, that's indicative of the market effectively trying to say that this range is going to hold for at least a few more weeks. And all, all I have to say on that is I like being on the other side of consensus. If consensus is that the mid-80s to mid-90s range is going to hold and we're not going to see anything. I came out this morning and said, yeah, we're going to test 100. It My hope is when we test 100 that we don't see bitcoin watch parties and all sorts of other crap because of people going crazy. I think that it's pretty much baked in the cake that it will happen. The real question is, is it a wick and I hope that it's not, or do we get an actual real rally, one that grinds higher and we'll see what happens. I mean, at the end of the day, we could also fall right back down to the middle, back into the range and the market clearly is betting on falling back into the range. And that's just, that's just the data. So, you know, I don't know about you, Scott. You know, what, what are you seeing on, in terms of relative strength and divergences? It feels to me like the range.
- [45:29]
A
Is still intact and the range is definitely intact. You know, listen, I like 94 better than 84. You know, for, for what it's worth, and I think everyone does, but there's not really much to talk about until we're back well into the hundreds, I think, and not, not at 100, like, you know, 105, 110 and solidly trading up there. I think that's when the renewed optimism should come in. I think Poly market right now has January touching 100 at 50 50. So that shows you where people's minds are at.
- [46:01]
E
Yeah, well, and that's exactly right. You know, it's, to me it's, it's highly likely, but it doesn't matter. Right? It really doesn't matter because we're, it's very underpriced relative to the other assets. You would like gold in particular that you would want to price it next to based on what happened last year. And the most important thing that investors always forget is time matters. It just does.
- [46:29]
A
Right.
- [46:30]
E
And so, and you talk about this all the time, but you know, it's that that matters. And as far as altcoins are concerned, utility and value is, is becoming more and more relevant. I mean even if it's the narrative of value, it's more and more relative and you can see it in what's happening. But you know, the meme coin markets haven't been bad the last couple days. I mean, does that make me happy? No, not really. But it is what it is.
- [46:57]
A
I'll take any bump in altcoins as a positive with so much PTSD and they are slightly outperforming kind of at the moment or at least, at least tracking on their bitcoin pairs and not getting smashed when bitcoin goes up. And I think there's a lot of reason for optimism right now on the charts and ain't just charts, but I think there's a lot of optimism.
- [47:17]
E
Yeah, no, no, I understand. And to me that's, that, that's the bigger deal here is, you know, we'll, we'll see why, you know, how all this stuff plays out. But you know, all everyone's talking about are geopolitics really. And, and if you're not talking about geopolitics, the other thing that people are talking about is, are the metals. And you know, it's hard to argue that silver over 80 bucks isn't, isn't important, but people should understand that there's industrial demand there. Gold back up towards almost 4,500. It's, it is non surprising. But then again is the only real, the only real negative, and it's not a negative would be if you believe that all of what's coming to light about the massive amount of fraud in the public entitlement programs in the United States, is that going to make our deficit spending go down. If you believe that, then, well, as I said, I have a bridge. I'd love to sell you. I do believe that it's possible that cutting that fraud, if we ever actually do it, to repurpose the same funds because I don't think they're going to stop spending it into things that are more meaningful could be a really good thing. But the likelihood.
- [48:32]
A
This is huge. If you actually accept, like if you go down the rabbit hole of the amount of fraud and I'm sorry if you had a thought to finish there, I thought you were done.
- [48:39]
E
No, no, I am.
- [48:40]
A
I don't want to interrupt. Yeah, if you go down the rabbit hole of the size of this fraud and this is non unique to Somali daycares or whatever talking about. But let's just talk about government waste and fraud in general. And you take Elon Musk's positions in Doge to the rational conclusion, you actually for the first time can say we don't need a politician because they'll never win. That runs on austerity. Right. The idea that we actually just need to take what's there and be efficient with it.
- [49:10]
E
Yeah.
- [49:10]
A
I mean, to your point, right. I mean, listen, what was it? Nine. This is nine. Bill. I don't remember the number. Numbers. I heard it in passing. But in the case of Minnesota, you know, 9 billion of the total, 18 billion allocated to these programs, you're talking about 50%, right? Listen, you and I both live in Florida. I've talked about this. I mean, we were presided over by Governor Rick Scott, also United States Senator Rick Scott, who oversaw the largest healthcare fraud in history. And we rewarded him with a governorship and being a senator, I mean the amount of healthcare fraud in Florida makes whatever's happening with Somali daycares immense. Minnesota look like an absolute joke. I mean my. One of my best friends came down from the DOJ to prosecute health care fraud in Florida 15 years ago. And let's say they use the busiest man in the Department of Justice. You can walk around any mall in Miami and knock on a door to any healthcare clinic and see that there's no patients. Right? And this has been happening down here for God knows how long. Of course they're not defrauding the government necessarily. I think it's more the insurance companies. But you get the idea. This is rampant. It's everywhere. I mean, how much did California spend on a high speed rail line that doesn't exist? I mean, how much have they spent on a homelessness problem to get more homeless people? Right? I mean these are. It's so blatant and in your face that even just prosecuting these people and redirecting funds would probably solve most of our problems.
- [50:26]
F
Let's not forget about the reparations.
- [50:29]
E
Oh, please, dear God, don't go there. Don't, don't get me on that. People are going to start calling me racist for saying that, that, you know, on that one. But the, the truth is, you know, I think Elon is dead on, you know, that some very large percentage, I mean, you know, he thinks it's in it, it's in the hundreds of billions of dollars could be freed up to actually provide health care for. I mean, you want to get universal health care in this country, stop all the fraud and have all the citizens be able to access health care. I mean, the fact that, and stop.
- [51:02]
A
Allowing insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies.
- [51:07]
E
Look, if it wasn't for the fact the insurance companies are the largest donors to a lot of people and it wasn't for the fact that the money in politics has corrupted most of Congress, I mean, we wouldn't be in this mix because it's actually relatively easy to fix. If I had a fiat pen to be able to write the right rules, I could tell you, you know, we could go through it. And I, and, and honestly, I'm thinking of writing a long form article about this because it's just so damn obvious. I mean, get the NGO funding out, get the, you know, make Citizens United, make it not so horrible. You know how you do that? You basically say campaign contributions can own under object to. Citizen United can only be used for speech. You can't hire people with it. You can't use it for travel, can't use it for security, can't use it for any of the shit that, that all the politicians use as a honeypot. All of a sudden that money becomes much less relevant, much less relevant for them if it can only be used for ad spending. Right? Okay, you know, it's, it's a done deal. And you know, there's lots of obvious things that could be done, but the politicians don't have any incentive to do it. I mean, they literally don't. I mean, you know, even the ones who, who claim that they want to fight fraud, like Ro Khanna, you know, Roe has a couple of good ideas, but yeah, there should, there's no way Congress people should be able to do prediction trade and prediction markets. There's no way because they can influence it. There's no way they should be able to trade stocks or crypto. No way. But it's not just the politicians, it's also their staffers. It's also their family members. It's also all of that. And it's just they always do things that are symbolic but not sufficient. And, and that's the problem in this country.
- [52:44]
A
Country.
- [52:44]
E
But the fraud side stuff, some of the real obvious, yeah, they can get rid of it, but the point is, is it's not going to stop spending, Scott. All it will do is allow them to redirect the funds. So people who think that we aren't. That the fiat system is going to somehow heal itself and we're going to stop.
- [53:00]
A
Oh yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying we might not have as broken of roads. Our bridges might be better. I mean you look at, it's hilarious. You look at like videos of China, you go down an Instagram rabbit hole of Chinese technology and they're living in like 3050 and we have potholes.
- [53:16]
E
Well, yeah, that's true. There's no doubt that that's true. They, they, of course they may live in 3050, but they have like, you know, brand new condo buildings that have like three people in them or nobody in them. So you know, it's like, yeah, it's pick, pick your pick your problem. But the, the truth is, is that the tailwinds for, for at least Bitcoin's use case and the tailwinds for crypto writ large's use cases are real. Every day there's somebody talking about Atkins at the SEC and others talking about how everything is going to go on blockchain. Yeah, sure, I'll believe it when I see voting go on chain so that it can't be tampered with and we'll see how all that goes. But that's a different story. I don't want to open that rabbit hole at, at 11:14.
- [54:07]
A
Hey, we, we, we pushed it through to 11:15. Great panel. Small but informed and, and very intelligent and sometimes a lot easier that way when we're not trying to manage, you know, 10 people and having them cycle in and out. I thought it was a great show and looking forward to doing it again tomorrow. Thanks Dave. Uh, Adam, Sid Harth, Gator Rya, the uh, ghost of Ryan who, who was there for a moment and Gaurav, we will obviously be back tomorrow at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Thank you everybody for listening. Thank you to our amazing panel for participating. Give them all a follow and we'll see you guys tomorrow later.