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- [00:01]
Scott
We're once again forced into a situation where we have to discuss geopolitics in the context of markets, which is not my favorite situation, to be quite honest. But with the United States considering an entrance into the war between Israel and Iran, it's worth discussing what that could mean for bitcoin. And I've got a longtime bitcoiner here to join and discuss. Mauricio from Len. We have a lot to talk about. And of course, Dan from Chart guys on the back half can't wait to dig into this conversation. Let's go.
- [00:31]
Mauricio
That's dope.
- [00:46]
Scott
The world seems to be getting crazier and crazier, and bitcoin is still just kind of hanging in there. I mean, trading at 104,781 when we have tariffs and, and wars escalating all over the world, seems like everybody needs to calm down and stop panicking, to be quite honest. But I'm going to go ahead and bring on Mauricio now. I mean, here we are. You know, I'm always like, I don't want to do geopolitics. I'm not a war expert. I don't want to talk about any of it. And frankly, it saddens and depresses me. So I hate to be in a position where I have to discuss what it means for assets or markets, but that is effectively our job. And people care. Right. But I mean, maybe just in your mind right now, bitcoin is where it is. You know, why is that in the context of everything that's happening?
- [01:34]
Mauricio
Yeah. Hey, Scott. Good morning. So I have an interesting, you know, connection, not necessarily to this geopolitical situation that's happening, but my wife's family's from Iran and I'm from Venezuela, so I'm somewhat familiar with the dynamics in these countries. And really, broadly speaking, the familiar with the dynamics of the collapse of a currency, the collapse of full collapse of faith in the government and institutions. I've seen what that's like and how people typically react, or how they reacted in my case when I was in Venezuela and what I hear from my family's relatives and such from Iran, and obviously when an event like this happens or when there's a looming threat of everything, every institution locally being completely abolished or dissolved, you start thinking it's all about self preservation, right? Like, how do I keep my family safe? How do I retain the power of my assets, how do I keep any of what I've built over my lifetime? And the mind usually goes to, you know, am I physically Safe. Do I have to leave? Do I have to, you know, leave Tehran or do I have to leave Caracas, or do I have to leave Barquisimeto? So that's like number one is how do you get out of the country first yourself, physically. Then when you got that covered, you start thinking about your assets. And the first thing you'll start doing, typically speaking, is you'll start a fire sale of everything that's locally held, every asset that is connected to the system or would have to be sold to a local buyer. So think real estate, vehicles, businesses, inventory, et cetera. And what you want to do with those proceeds is immediately ditch the local currency next, right? Because you're likely everybody's going to be trying to do the same thing. Everybody's going to be trying to get rid of their local currency. In the case of Venezuela. And so the bid on the other side to turn those bolivares into dollars is very thin and people take their powder flesh. So you're no longer dealing with a rational market. You're dealing with whatever the other person is willing to sell you these dollars at. And really, beggars can't be choosers in these situations, right? So I remember in Venezuela when we were looking to fire sale al bolivores, you would call up all the guys that used to sell dollars. Obviously in this point or in these environments, the bank stopped working. There's no bank you can go to to buy your dollars. There's no, you know, central body. You have to do this in the P2Pmarkets, broadly speaking. So all those protections also go away. And if the guy has dollars, you'll buy dollars in cash. If the buy has, you know, if whoever's selling you those has tether on Tron, you'll buy tether on Tron. If they have bitcoin, you will buy bitcoin. And typically you would prefer things that don't rely on banking rails and you would prefer things that can be moved pretty quickly. So stablecoins and bitcoin shine in this moment. And in fact, what I would expect to see from a situation, sad as it is on what's happening around the world and all these wars, the people in the countries that are impacted are very likely going to rush towards bitcoin and stablecoins in this moment. This is, this is, this is the time and the place for which this technology was built. This is why the number goes up, is because it helps people in this situation. So I'll pause this rant for this two minutes.
- [04:59]
Scott
It's a Very solid rant. And I think you mentioned one of my favorite memes, which is that I always say people just want dollars and they're willing to do it the fastest, cheapest way, which is stablecoins on Tron, which you mentioned. Right. So I think obviously fast and cheap and accessible wins. But I think we have learned both in the case of Venezuela and places all over the world, not even just in geopolitical conflict, but just when they have any sort of financial wobble, they generally want dollars more than they want Bitcoin. And then listen, stablecoins are the topic right now. I mean, we know we obviously just finally passed legislation. I can show you. I mean, this is nuts when you, when you cook through these stories on stablecoins. I mean, Circle's trading at like a 6 or 7x from, from the moments pre IPO the other day when this app passed. We know the genius stablecoin bill is likely to get passed. I actually had a conversation yesterday with Hagerty, Senator Hagerty, who was the author of this, which will be coming out. But I mean, Trump wants this done. Everyone wants this done. Beside saying exactly what you did is that that crypto's push will lock in dollar supremacy. I mean, stable coins are the thing right now.
- [06:10]
Mauricio
With. No, with. I mean, I don't think it's, it's a, it's not shocking to me. I've been, I write these, these predictions every year just mostly for fun. But last year, this year, I, I've been waiting anxiously for stable coins to reach $500 billion worth of market cap. And I think they're, they're. The supersonic growth of stable coins to me is almost inevitable because eventually the United States and the regulators understand and they seem to be getting there now that this is, this is a tool for the dollar and it helps the US in more ways than one. Number one, it, it gets people, it gets dollars into people's hands easier. Like, look at the situation that's happening in, in everywhere around the world right now. People want to escape their local currencies and the best way for them to do so is to have a US Dollar based or pegged stablecoin. It's very challenging for people to use dollars outside of that wrapper. If you're a person in Tehran, you would likely need to have a bank account somewhere outside of Tehran. That is very, very challenging. With a stablecoin address, you can just download any type of app or wallet and spin up an address and receive them within minutes. And so it's just far superior as far as an instrument than a dollar in a bank rail or on a bank rail. And the other piece is each one of these tokens, each one of these dollars directly goes to buying US Debt which is another big benefit in a time where foreign buyers for this debt seem to be dropping left, right and center. And so I'm not surprised to see the embrace. In fact, I think it took too long for them to get here. But I finally see that they're here and they're putting the guardrails in place for people to really go and drive these things to the world Again. We can argue all we want whether Bitcoin is more censorship resistant, what's actually happening.
- [08:00]
Scott
There's no argument, right? We all agree where the money should go, but we can't argue about where the money is going. Literally. Senator Hagerty said to me yesterday exactly what you did. He said stablecoin buyers are going to be the biggest buyers of U.S. treasuries and debt.
- [08:13]
Mauricio
He said it and listen, as a depositor, as a person, think of yourself as a person that's hold like you're a foreign national, you're not a U.S. person. When you're holding dollars in a bank, you're also you're holding euro dollars. These euro dollars are most often not insured for deposits. So you have no deposit insurance in the dollar deposit you have in these banks because they're not covered by fdic. When you're buying a US treasury you're buying it from an authorized issuer most often and that issuer is required to hold that into treasuries meaning your dollar is guaranteed by the full faith of the United States. Now we can debate whether how much that's worth. Does that make you comfortable? Would you prefer bitcoin? But if the option is having a euro dollar deposit in an offshore bank that doesn't cover that's not FDIC insured, it actually gives you I would argue even better protections as a holder or saver to have it on a stablecoin.
- [09:05]
Scott
I mean Paolo, I had him on before from Tether and he basically has said it publicly but jokes he's like the biggest risk to tether and stablecoins is the money we have in fractional reserve banks that they're forcing us to keep there as backing. In Mika for example, they have to keep dollars in European registered banks as part of it. And we saw with Silicon Valley bank that those banks can just fail, that the money's got to happen with usdc. If the Fed hadn't have stepped in or the treasury we know it would have happened.
- [09:35]
Mauricio
And I think it all goes back to what is the type of reserve these banks are buying? How far out are they buying at the maturity curve? Because again, it's, if they're getting overnight deposits and they're buying those, you know, and they're buying 10 year treasuries with that, in the 10 year treasury gets drops because of, because of, you know, interest rate dynamics, you're going to have a mark to market loss. So you can't even redeem. So that's why you had to go. And, and what's the BBFTD program that the Fed put? Basically like the Fed had to open a window that said, hey, I know your 10 year treasury doesn't sell for what you bought it for right now, but I'll take, I'll give you full pop if you put it as collateral with me for those dollars so you can meet your withdrawals and you don't have to basically shut down the bank. So they, they have all these instruments and mechanisms that they can use to keep banks solvent per se, as long as banks are playing by the rules the Fed sets, which is buy my Treasuries in the maturity curve that I want. And so it's, it's sort of like you scratch my back, I'll, I'll scratch yours. Right? Like you buy my 30 year, because I need someone to buy my 30 year, but if somebody comes in and you're in trouble for buying it, I'll help you. That's kind of how I see it.
- [10:41]
Scott
All right, so let's pivot back from stablecoins to Bitcoin because at the end of the day, regardless of what people are doing right now, we both agree what they should be doing, right? We, I think both believe very deeply in bitcoin. We believe that it's a hedge against all this nonsense and that in a situation where countries are melting down, we have geopolitical strife, should buy Bitcoin, memorize your seed phrase, self custody and exit the country. Right. So let's presume that that's basically your thought as well as mine. You would think in that scenario that price would maybe be following these insane inflows. Right? We know that Bitcoin ETFs have been wildly successful. I know you have some takes on who's buying the Bitcoin and why. Maybe it's not going up, but then I want to spend a bit of time because you have found exceptional ways to actually use your bitcoin so that you could live your life without having to sell it and exit. So first a quick conversation on why you think the price hasn't rocketed. When we see these crazy inflows and, and we know what's happening around the world, and then let's dive deeply into what you're doing at Lennon.
- [11:41]
Mauricio
Definitely. So I think there's a few reasons why I think you're not seeing these, these, these waves of price appreciation that many of us would expect to see once you see these numbers. In terms of the inflows that we're seeing in the market, not so much just around the ETFs, but there's also massive inflows going into these Bitcoin acquisition vehicles or these companies, whether that is debt or equity issuance. There's, there's just billions and billions of dollars flowing into these entities. And people are sitting here puzzled as to why are, why is all this money flowing and why is Bitcoin price sitting where it is today? So I would say there's a very different buyer this time around or this cycle around. Like if you look at the people that are buying ETFs or if you look at the people that are investing into these acquisition companies and more so the people managing these acquisition companies, yes, they have a mandate to buy Bitcoin. Yes, they have a mandate to have it on their balance sheet and deploy that cash. But at the same time they are competing against dozens of now other treasury acquisition companies that have been doing this for a while. They have the first mover advantage in the case of MicroStrategy, and they have an average cost that's much lower than these guys because Micro started buying at 20. So Michael could actually go up or go out and say, I bought at 110, that's fine. My average is still the 60s and the 50s. That's phenomenal. But if you're a first time buyer and you got, you know, a couple billion dollars to deploy and you went out, you market bought it at the top and you, you, you yourself created the blow off top and then the market sold off, you're going to be seen as the company that bought the top. You, you guys are not great executors or you're not executing the strategy the same way others should. And so when they're buying these things, they're not going out and putting market sell orders. A lot of these companies are still sitting on this cash waiting for a dip. And what I think you're going to see is you're going to see a lot more muted downside to bitcoin. Because if you look, if you look at the dips we were seeing, they're all getting absorbed and just getting right bought up. But the second we start cranking over 110, that demand just kind of dies off like there. Nobody really wants to be the guy chasing bitcoin higher right now. And so what I expect to see is a muted downside throughout the summer. I think dips are going to get bought. I don't yet know who will be the, the market by chase order. Maybe it's going to be a, a short seller like a Jim Channels or somebody that does a pair straight and is forced to close the position because of a dislocation and they, and they market sell to cover their short and drips us higher. But these methodical guys that have a mandate to surgically buy this bitcoin at the best price possible, they're not going to be the guys taking us to 121.50 anytime soon, as per me.
- [14:27]
Scott
Let's talk about what you actually do with your bitcoin because of various reasons, because all of us want to hold our bitcoin forever and never sell it. That's really hard when you have to actually live your life. Obviously we'll go ahead and bring Leden up here, but interestingly you were one of the first and one of the biggest that was offering bitcoin backed loans. But you actually went into Ethereum backed loans as well. You started offering yield products and I noticed of late that you have now made a very definitive decision to scale back from those things and just focus on bitcoin backed loans, which is the single thing that will allow people to not sell their bitcoin, remain tax efficient, but also actually live your life without selling your bitcoin. So could you break this down for us?
- [15:12]
Mauricio
Yes. So I believe so. Just briefly, in a nutshell, what does letin do? Let it lets you use your bitcoin as collateral to get the dollars you need without having to sell your bitcoin. If you're in a position where you want to make a new investment or need cash and just simply don't want to sell your highest and best performing asset. It's a very simple process. You come, you pass kyc. We're a regulated entity, so we have to do kyc and then once you do that, you can submit an application and you can have the money you need typically within the same day, within hours. Typically Actually depends if you choose stablecoin or dollar disbursements the reason we built LED was really to solve our own problem. I started mining bitcoin in Venezuela with my family in 2015. I set up another mine in Canada with my best friend Adam in 2017. And we kept running into the same issue which was we had bitcoin income, we were on a bitcoin standard but we have fiat expenses. We didn't want to sell it and no, none of our financial entities gave us a loan back in 2017. And we thought that that was a massive opportunity because bitcoin is the world's best collateral both for the lender and the borrower. I've said this ad nauseum but for the borrower you can be a person in Colombia or Madrid and you can access a loan in the same terms which is really financial inclusion. This was impossible before Bitcoin. I couldn't underwrite gold in Spain in the same way I could underwrite gold in Venezuela. I can underwrite bitcoin in the same way because it's coming to me and it's the same uniform asset. And for the lender it's great because it trades 24,7. I can liquidate it in the case of default. I can underwrite credit uniformly. So it's, it's just better collateral. So that's, that's what the product does. Now our at Leaden we are a very simple business and we like to be that focused on what we think is the biggest opportunity ahead of us. Bitcoin backed loans are a multi billion dollar opportunity today and I think that is going to 10x over the next two to three years. Why? Because holding a hard asset and borrowing a weak asset when done responsibly can be a virtuous transaction that is great for the lender and for the borrower. An example of this that most people will be familiar with is a U.S. mortgage. A U.S. mortgage is, is a ginormous leverage short on the dollar, anchored by a house and most often sold to you at a subsidized interest rate by the government that is well below inflation. And so what happens here is you're short on the dollar does phenomenally. Your house is I think the biggest misconception in finance and the way they gaslight a lot of people today is they make you think the dollar is stable and, and everything around the dollar is moving. It's akin to being told that the universe gravitates around earth, right? And so it's not that the earth runs around the sun. It's like the dollar is the center, it's the stable one. And everything around is what's moving. That's actually incorrect. The house is what stay like. The house is what has gravity and the dollar is what's moving around. And so you're shorting the dollar and you're doing really, really well. Every so often the equity value of your house jumps. You then take another loan to buy a different house and you keep doing these transactions, which is a short dollar long house. In our case, we let you go short dollars long. Bitcoin, which I argue is much better. And effectively this is what you do. You're shorting bad money, you're shorting weak money, and you're holding good money or a good asset as collateral. So. So that is what Leden allows you to do. And people that use these products responsibly. I can speak for Leden's experience. We've been in business since 2018. Every person that's used our loans responsibly since we started offering them has done well financially. It's why they keep coming back. It's why our business is as big as it is today and why I think this is why and why we want to focus on doing just this. Bitcoin yield is great, but it has a very different risk profile. Ethereum, yes, it's a great rail for stablecoins. I don't think it has the same long term investment profile that bitcoin does. The less things we do, the better we will do them. We at Lennon believe the best restaurants have the smallest menus. So that's what we want to do. Bitcoin backed loans better than anyone else.
- [19:26]
Scott
Yeah, I'm looking at this. Loans funded since 2018. 9,844,239,307. I mean that's a big, big number. There's a real thirst and appetite for this, obviously. Do you think if they pass different tax laws that would change or do you think that this isn't really about taxes, it's about not selling the bitcoin?
- [19:48]
Mauricio
I think there's both things at play. I mean, people love the fact that it's very tax advantageous. In most jurisdictions, borrowing against your Bitcoin is not a taxable event. We're selling that Bitcoin is a taxable event. I would say even in places like Germany, for example, where they have no capital gains on bitcoin after a year, like there's still demand for products like this. It's not necessarily just the, like we, we service companies that are in, in varied Sort of tax favorable jurisdictions like BVI etc, they still use these products because they keep the upside on the collateral asset. It's not always just the tax that you have to pay on the sale, it's keeping the upside. The other pieces around Bitcoin, you know this Scott, like bitcoin, that's I think 80 of their moves over the course of a year in like 10 trading days. Right. Or, or it's it. You have to be in the market at all times. You cannot time this thing. And so a lot of people choose to borrow just so that they could stay in the market because they have a long term positive view on bitcoin and they know that if they sell it and try to buy it back most often they'll never time it right. And they won't just get more bitcoin by timing the market. I know I tried to do that when I was having to self to pay my expenses and then buy it back. I never got back the same amount or by trading on this thing.
- [21:09]
Scott
Yeah.
- [21:09]
Mauricio
Oh exactly. Hence why we started this thing. It's really about staying long, being patient and not trying to time the market, but spend more time in the market.
- [21:19]
Scott
And so how when looking at this, so it says borrow from 12.4% APR, obviously a lot of people probably look at that be like that's a pretty high rate, you know, so obviously you want that to come down. But long term it's the same as your house, right? You're, you're, I mean people love their mortgage payment you talked about before because even if it seems high now, it's really low in 30 years when you're making the exact same payment. Corrected.
- [21:43]
Mauricio
Yeah, correct. And listen, will these rates should these rates. Would I like these rates to be lower? Yes. Do I think these rates should be lower? Hell yes. Because this is much better collateral than then property, then houses and that basically anything else you could use to back a loan. Why are these rates so high today? A few reasons. Number one is banks in the US were not able to get involved. The fact they were punished by, you know, interacting with bitcoin, that changed. And that is also with that they've allowed them to start participating in this space. You saw the big announcement from Cantor that they're coming into the space with bitcoin back loans and JP Morgan was out the other day saying they're going to start lending dollars to people holding ETFs. Those guys that they understand companies like us have issued billions of dollars at double digit returns with ever having a loss In a bitcoin back loan, they're seeing this and they're saying, we want that yield. That yield is phenomenal for that risk profile. And so they are going to start bidding these down. We've already dropped our rates significantly this year. I think that trend will continue. Continue. Now I will caution away. Yeah, exactly. Now I would caution, I would caution people to compare bitcoin back loan rates to mortgages because a lot of people look at the mortgage and think, oh, that's a free market rate. That's not a free market rate. Really, the bank is, is asking you for all these, you know, there's all these incentives for the bank and the, then the risk return for the bank is very different on a mortgage because they are borrowing money from the government at a particular rate that the government is fixing or subsidizing. The government's telling the bank, I want you to land at mortgages at this rate because I want the housing market to be in this particular condition. So the, the bank borrows from the government has, has a predictable spread and then originates that loan and sells that paper off to a publicly subsidized entity. So they have privatized profits, socialized losses. And it's very different for me to issue a loan if I'm getting the whole back end done and secured by the government. They're going to tell me the rate I have to lend, that it's not the free market. So what I would compare this most often is to a private lender, perhaps not necessarily a tier one bank. And if you compare it to that, we're getting very, very close. And I would argue that we're going to be under it probably within 18 months. So, so those are the, the sort of two considerations that I would mention when, when looking at rates and comparing. Now the other thing I'll say is even at these rates and higher rates, last year our clients saw their collateral appreciate eight times more than the interest they paid us. So it's, it's really the interest rate plus the rate of appreciation of the collateral asset. So when you consider all those things, I think these products still make sense today and will even make more sense down the line.
- [24:39]
Scott
Yeah, absolutely. So for full transparency, I've taken, I've gone through the whole process. I've actually tried the site, I've done it, I participate. It's extremely easy. Extremely, extremely, extremely easy. But maybe you could just break down what that process looks like. I know we only got a couple more minutes, but I want people to know what it looks like. To actually take a loan?
- [24:58]
Mauricio
Yes, as you mentioned, it's that simple. That's one of the value props here at Ledden. You come in, we are regulated, so you have to do kyc. Once you complete kyc, you can submit an application. It takes two minutes to do that. We'll tell you the loan address or the collateral address for you to send the bitcoin into. Once the bitcoin is received, you usually have the dollars that you need in. Right now, our average funding time is 9.6 hours. So most people that come in in the morning are off with their dollars in the afternoon. The loans can be repaid at any time and the loans start at $500. So if you want to test how this whole thing works, you can. With $1,000 worth of Bitcoin, you can go in and out and test the pipes and understand how everything works. Our loans don't require monthly interest payments. That's really important because our loans are global and they start at very low amounts. So if you're a person in Colombia considering these loans and thinking, how am I going to send $5 interest payments a month? Don't worry, you don't have to. All interest accrues until you decide to repay the loan. And you can do that at any time, no penalty. Bitcoin is the only collateral we accept. Collateral, importantly collateral, let in the only loans we offer as of July 1 is custody loans. So when you put your bitcoin as collateral with Leaden, that bitcoin sits in custody of either Leaden or one of our funding partners at all times. It does not move. It does not get lent to generate anything. It just sits there. When you repay the loan, you get your bitcoin back. And that's pretty much it.
- [26:21]
Scott
That answers how other people who are competitors may be able to have offered different rates because they're doing what banks do, they're playing with.
- [26:32]
Mauricio
And we also importantly, we were the first lender to ever do proof of reserves. We have the longest running proof of reserves program in the industry. So please, I welcome you to check this out. And if you're interested in any of these products, don't just trust what I say. Diligence us. Go ask the right questions, Demand proof of reserves. That's if I'll leave it at. That is if you demand anything from any one of these services, it's demand proof of reserves. The rest you can try to negotiate, but do not take anything that does not have it.
- [26:57]
Scott
It's crazy. All right, I know. We're like in the last minutes here because that went by super fast. Anything I missed? Anything last you need to mention it's led in.IO ledn. Just so people can see that if that's too small up there, highly recommend you at least checking this out and trying it. But sure we missed something.
- [27:13]
Mauricio
Hey, no, I mean we will catch it up on the next one. There's always so much to talk about. I'm really curious to see how this whole genius bill unfolds. I am excited to hopefully come back on and break some lower interest rates in the future for our lows. But I know that that's going to happen throughout the year. So. Yeah, I appreciate the time.
- [27:33]
Scott
Rishi man, thank you so much. I had, you know, you were there on spaces that one day it was like literally perfect for anyone who was listening on Crypto Town Hall. Somehow we dove into this like deep conversation on bitcoin backed loans and pristine collateral and, and then you show up in the, like in the audience. I'm like request, request, request. Because we know each other got there. So I thought it would be perfect to have that follow up here on, on YouTube. So thanks for taking the time to come out and discuss all this with us.
- [27:59]
Mauricio
Always a pleasure man. See you at the next one.
- [28:01]
Scott
All right guys, thank you so much. Give Mauricio a follow. It's right down below and check out Leden IO. Thanks man.
- [28:08]
Mauricio
Cheers.
- [28:09]
Scott
All right guys. And now you know. Cause it's Thursday that we got chart guys here to break down what's going on in the market from the technical perspective. And I feel like every time we talk now, bitcoin's just like 100, 405 grand.
- [28:22]
Dan
Yeah, it's tightening up. But that again also means volatility is coming. We've got a standard, what I call an equilibrium which is just higher lows and lower highs tightening up. And that's going to break, I would say next week at the latest. And we know our base of support's down around a hundred thousand, the resistance zone up around 110 to 112. And you know, if we break, if we break 100,000, let's just lay out that scenario. It's essentially I, the way that I'm viewing bitcoin right now is I don't have to think. And I like that when I just make a clear statement, you know, 100,000 support, we're bullish. That's. I don't have to do any analysis. I'm just, I'm leaning back in the chair, not doing Anything. If we break a hundred thousand, I got to start paying attention a little bit just because that means, you know, it's starting to look eerily similar to 2021. It's not game over for the Bulls, but it just means I gotta pay attention now. So we're watching to see if that happens. You know, if that does happen, I'll zoom out to the monthly chart. Just because we've been holding monthly EMA 12 at every period of consolidation on the way up. And so Bulls want to see that continue and that will be, you know, right around 90,000 into next month. But you know, we're just patiently waiting and as you were mentioning, you know, for me it's almost like the alt season of this cycle is in crypto stocks. And you know, and it's, it's. The logic makes sense. Right? So you've got prior cycles, you've got to be on Coinbase Finance, Kraken, whatever to trade Bitcoin. Bitcoin profits go into altcoins now, tons of capital are using the ETFs and it's just sloshing around in the stock market world where you've got, you know, CEP running 400% plus in a few days with, with Cantor and you've got Circle putting on a show. You know, Circle in the last nine days has done what Bitcoin's done in terms of gains in the last year and a half. And so traders like me are laser focused on these things. You know, Circle Friday was really fun to trade. It reminded me of Blue sky breakout Bitcoin in 2017 where you break resistance, you get follow through, you just trade sideways, build a new level, another leg up and you know, of course all the other low cap names that are following microstrategies model that you've, you've mentioned here briefly. And it's just, you know, the, the for me as a trader, no fees in the US trading and this kind of volatility that's not present anywhere else in crypto. It just makes perfect sense to be focusing here and that's just an attention suck away from the altcoin space.
- [30:51]
Scott
Totally agree, 100% agree with that take. And I think it's only going to get crazier when we have, you know, 50 or 100 of those Bitcoin treasury companies trading publicly and, and it'll do the same thing.
- [31:01]
Dan
You know, there'll be a boom, a, a blow off top and I expect Circle to do within the next few days. You know, we're set to potentially Gap up tomorrow and I'll look for it to, to have its major run, top out, pull back 40 and then tighten up sideways just like CEP is doing. Speaking of which, I'm keeping an eye out for a weekly higher low because again, after this amount of volatility you scout the tightening range is the most likely scenario. But for now it's just you trade circle, you gap up tomorrow, I take profit, I buy 5 minute oversold for an hourly higher low. It's just the playbook of what we did in Bitcoin's prior significant blue sky breakout runs, which is very different this year. Again a lot of sideways trading grinding. I recall being able to all in market buy a new all time high in 2017 and know that I'm gonna get an instant 5 to 10% in the next two hours of that bull break. And obviously that market's gone because of the liquidity. But it makes perfect sense like why, if I'm big money, why am I going to run something like an altcoin where every, you know, if it goes up 50%, think of how many bag holders from years past are gonna say, oh, I can finally get out break even versus something that it's all time highs, zero resistance, very illiquid, much easier to run. You know, the bell rings Friday afternoon or yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, and it just, the buyers just push it up another 8% because it's very illiquid. And so they're just taking advantage of that lack of liquidity to the upside and it will work to the downside eventually as well. But again, it's just the game changes and I love watching how money's flowing. And as you were mentioning the genius act and all that we're seeing, you know, MasterCard and Visa dumping over the last couple of days. It's inverse. You know, it's a paired trade. You're short Ma and V in your long circle and Coin. And then you got the coin news coming out and PayPal dumps. So I just love watching the capital moving around as people are looking towards the potential, you know, revolution of the financial industry. Gaining some concrete steps with this genius bill.
- [33:09]
Scott
Absolutely. Anything else you're watching?
- [33:12]
Dan
Just, just circle and coin because you know, they started standing out last week on, on Friday when the market was really worried about Iran. You had these names standing out and closing at the high of the day and then it's just been nothing but relative strength. And Coin exploded on Friday as well. You know, these names obviously very closely linked Coin and Circle. And so I'm just going to be day trading coin and circle in both directions. But obviously a long bias for now. And that's my focus, you know, for at least the next few trading days in the next week.
- [33:40]
Scott
Love it. All right, man. Well, thank you. Dan always cooks right through. It gives us all the alpha in, like, eight minutes or less. It's amazing, people. You can give Dan a follow chart, guys, on X, of course, and his YouTube channel. And we'll be back next week. Damn, man. Thank you so much. That was great.
- [33:56]
Dan
See you, Scott.
- [33:57]
Scott
All right, guys, we'll see you soon.
- [34:01]
Mauricio
Let's do.