On The Brink with Castle Island - Weekly Roundup 11/22/24 (Bitcoin $100k?, Gensler Resigns, Nocoiner Rankings, Looking Back) (EP.577)

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Matt and Nic return for another week in the markets. In this episode: How is the DOGE going to work? Bitcoin is heading to 100k Gary Gensler announces his resignation as SEC chair We look back at Gensler's awful term 18 state AGs file a lawsuit against the SEC The SEC's dealer rule is tossed by a judge Trump is mulling the creation of a crypto czar Microstrategy is trading at a massive premium The latest on OCP 2.0 FDIC Gruenberg chair testifies in the House and potentially perjures himself FTX cofounder Gary Wang given no time in prison Coinbase is delisting wBTC Trump nominates Lutnick for Commerce Secretary Bitcoin Options launch on IBIT Shaq settles a lawsuit for his NFT touting Solana ETFs are filed Goldman is spinning out their digital assets platform We unveil our first nocoiner draft picks We reflect on Bitcoin's progress after 10 years in the industry Sponsor notes: Coin Metrics, A Data-Driven Update on Stablecoins: Analyzing growth in stablecoin supply, trading volumes, on-chain usage, and yield generation.

Matt Walsh and Nick Carter are partners at Castle Island Ventures. All of these expressed by them or the guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Castle Island Ventures. Guests and host may maintain positions in the assets discussed in this podcast. You should not treat any opinion expressed by anyone on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of their personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Brought down by bad mortgage investments, Lehman, which has 25,000 employees, will be liquidated.

The Federal Government Loans American International Group, AI, $85 billion. This is a different kind of market, and the Fed is asleep. The federal government is stepping it to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis. The Bank of England has pumped 75 billion pounds more to Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative easing. You print a couple trillion dollars, and all of a sudden, people start to worry.

So out of this worry, we have something called the Big Coin. I'm Matt Walsh. And I'm Nick Carter. And this episode is brought to you by Coin Metrics, and here is the Metrics Minute. For today's Metrics Minute, we're digging into state. Stablecoin data. The supply of stablecoins continues to grow. It's at $191 billion, led by Tether at $126 billion. Ethereum issued stablecoins are the majority at $107 billion. It's 55% of total supply. Stablecoin spot volumes surge past $120 billion on November 12th. That was driven by Tether.

While first digital gained a lot of traction. Of the stable coin trading pairs, BTC, USDT led the pairs with $205 billion in spot volume. followed by ETH USDT, and also in the top 10, Doge USCT and Pepe USDT, adjusted stablecoin transfer volume topped 50 billion in November, driven by Tether on Tron and Ethereum, while USCC on Ethereum and Solana also gained momentum. Athena's USDA emerged as the fastest growing stable coin, relatively speaking, in Q3, with supplies rising 40% to 3.5 billion, led by positive funding rates. that is your metrics minute. You got to love coin metrics coming in with a metrics minute

all around stable coins on the week that Bitcoin is going to 100K. They're not all about the number going up. They're all around the true metrics and the true utility. You've got to tip your cap. Yeah, there's just other stuff going on. It's not all about price. Which is not all about price.

So we're doing this podcast in person today. Is this going to be 100K party tonight? It could well be. Yeah, we recorded our annual meeting today, another year in the books. Another year? What is it? Six year?

Feels like it's been forever, Matt. So 20, well, we started working together in 2017. Now it's the year of our Lord, 2024. It feels like an absolute eternity, but we're still going strong. We're still grinding. A lot of things are breaking our way, I have to say. Yeah, things are looking up. We've been in the trenches this whole damn time, Matt.

It's just incredible how your body feels better when the regulators aren't trying to kill your industry anymore. You know what I thought after Trump won? I was like, damn, I really got to get my house. health and order so that I can live long enough to see the new golden age that's about to dawn for America. I don't think I've ever been more optimistic about this country. Did you read Vivek and Elon's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal? Yeah. What a ambitious roadmap they have. I do wonder, because they're both strong personalities, right? We've had Vivek on this podcast, in fact,

on this very podcast. And I wonder if they'll be able to work together. I could foresee that falling apart, you know, within a month or two, actually. You know, it kind of reminds me, so Harry Truman came to real prominence in a role that he was in the Senate and he was investigating how basically the government was being defrauded by all these private contractors during World War II. He was doing these investigations into the waste and abuse. And he became a national figure as a result of this. Really? Really? I did not know that. That is why FDR picked him as a VP because it was just really prominent and he was perceived as this very honest broker who was investigating all of this government corrupt. and all of these scams.

And that's sort of what Vivek has the opportunity to do here. That could be Vivek's trajectory, right? Yeah. From Doge Tsar to VP to president. I think that's exactly right. I mean, I have a very high opinion of that, man. I think he's an excellent speaker. He is a, his intellect is really, really off the charts.

I remember, I'll never forget. I saw him speak at Fort Worth for the North American Blockchain Summit. that's actually happening, I believe, next week maybe again in Dallas, last year. And he spoke for 20, 30 minutes with no notes. He spoke clearly about crypto, about regulatory overreach and crypto, about the Chevron doctrine, actually. And he didn't use a single failure word. He just spoke fluidly and clearly, and I've never seen anything like it.

I don't know how you learn how to do that. If he took courses to learn how to do this, if he was in that friars, What is it, the Friars Club? I mean, I was a Lincoln Douglas debater, too. I was pretty good, but not that good. But you still have the yums and the likes sometimes. I do. I certainly do.

I have the filler words. Well, there is a lot to talk about this week. Had a podcast this week with Aaron McDonald. This was our first podcast about the Metaverse. So Aaron is the founder of Futureverse, which is a really cool category. We don't invest in blockchain-based gaming, but I am interested in it, I would say. Yeah, I mean, it's been around for a long time gaming Metaverse themes in crypto, haven't really seen anything materialize yet.

Futureverse is cool because they've been acquiring all of these different properties, different studios. So he's gotten out and acquired, I think, 10 different companies over the past couple of years. So keep an eye out on Futureverse. There was really, really cool episodes to do. I had a lot of fun with that one. So so much news. But before that, also a bunch of deals.

Let's hop into the deals of the week. First one up is an acquisition. So Paxos has acquired membrane finance. This is a European eMoney institution that issues stablecoins. EU stable coins. I mean, you know, under MICA, the problem is I think there's capital requirements for stable coin issuers in the EU, so that is going to hamper their growth. So it's not that economical to issue a euro-based stable coin.

So there is a slight misstep, in my opinion, from regulatory perspective. Well, there's just not a lot of European stablecoins out there in the market. It's still 99.something percent dominated by US dollars. Next up, Blowfish, a crypto wallet security platform. They're required by Phantom, a leading wallet in the Salta ecosystem. Phantom is climbing the rankings of the app store, by the way, just becoming a mainstream consumer product. So is Coinbase, by the way.

Is Coinbase backup to, like, number one in the app store? I mean, you know, it's funny because we always have those top signals that we monitor, and Coinbase hitting number one in the app store is, one, but then when it happens, you're just too busy, you know, being euphoric to remember, hey, the top signal just hit. Yeah, it's a super cycle. So, yeah, maybe we'll disregard the top signals this time. Might be super cycle.

Next one up is barter. This is a defy trading infrastructure platform. There is $3 million from Maven 11, lattice, and anagram. Then you have no bowl, a stable coin, an RWA protocol. There is 15 million from Paradigm, Polychain, and Wintermute. Then it's open layer, decentralized data collection protocol. They raised $5 million from Andresen, IOSG, Spartan, and others. Next up, you have Bitfinity, a Bitcoin Layer 2 network.

There is 12 million from Parified, Polychain, and others. Next one is Monkey Tilt. This is an online casino using crypto. There is $30 million from Pantera, HackVC, Polychain, and Accomplice. Monkey Tilt. That makes me think of Super Monkey Ball. Did you ever play that game? No, I didn't play.

I remember. I'd never play games. but I played board games. For having founded a fund that's named after a very famous game. No, the fund is named after a very famous fort, where fortunately I believe the British might have been slightly victorious, but it is named after a fort. And coincidentally, Civ, civilization, great game.

Next up we have Valentus Labs, developers of a Dex. They raise 7.5 million from 7X ventures, crack adventures, and cyber fund. Then it's rise. This is a stable coin powered payroll platform. There is 6.3 million from Draper Associates, polymorphic capital, DCG and others. Stable coin payroll, man.

Like that, that's going to be a thing. It's happening. It's definitely happening. I'll tell you that. Next up, we have D-block, crypto wallet company. There is 16 million from headline ventures,

Hawxton Ventures, and 20VC. Exponent finance is a Solana D-D-Fi protocol. There is $3 million from RockawayX, Solana, and Mechanism. And lastly, very interesting DCG is launching Yuma, which is a fund incubating and investing in companies building on BitTensor, the decentralized AI network. Barry Silbert will be CEO of Yuma.

Wow. Yeah, DCG's really gone all in on BitTensor. I do like BitTensor. Big bet, big swing for those guys. So interesting to see that one. Well, Bitcoin is cruising to 100K. We have a special bit that we're going to do at the end of this podcast to celebrate. prematurely perhaps the 100K threshold.

So we're going to give it away now? No, no, no, that's going to be a secret till the end. Another insane piece of news. Gensler is resigning. I don't even know what to say about this. So Gary Gensler is announced that he is resigning as of inauguration day. So he's technically still there. There's still a lot of damage you can do to your country,

to your fellow citizens in this two-month period. there's still there is more carnage that you can inflict upon the capital markets and consumers this is a bit of a theme embattled to put it you know very favorably um fdic chair marty groomberg has also announced his intention to resign but not yet i don't know why you wouldn't just step down now and let someone else have the interim and that person who has the interim then can go to get a job and say well i technically i was in charge of the agency forget about this interim. So a historically bad term as SEC chair from Gunzor did, not enough bad things to say about him.

I think we will have to have a longer podcast, maybe when he's out of office, to actually go through the laundry list, just the laundry list of things that were not done properly during this administration. Yeah, I don't even know where to start. I mean, not only not providing any kind of constructive guidance whatsoever to the crypto space, but being distracted by nonsense that is very little to do with securities markets, like their climate push, you know, things like that. And then, of course, this systematic campaign of harassment for all of the major U.S.-based crypto firms. I mean, and then all the scandals, the debt box case, losing in court consistently, one of the biggest losers from a litigation perspective out there, even as recently as today.

Well, you know, while we're talking about things, how about completely missing FTX, having a meeting with them in 2022 to discuss a no action letter? That wasn't a great look. Prometheum, not a great look. Custody rule, private funds rule, changes to the Exchange Act, getting the answers to the test from Elizabeth Warren prior to a congressional hearing, Sab 121, the list goes. on and on. I mean, it's just so much. And just today, another L for Gensler, a judge in Texas tossed out the dealer rule, which is implemented by the SEC earlier this year, which

brought in the scope of a broker dealer, would have probably forced certain defy front ends to register with the SEC. What is the significance of this one, Matt? I mean, this rule was completely insane. So this dealer rule would have brought in all sorts of front ends into this broker-dealer apparatus. So you're talking about, even in Tradfi, outside of crypto, talking about some messaging platforms that would have been regulated as a broker-dealer. This would have been devastating to defy. And so it was brought before a judge, as many of these things have been under the Biden-Gensler regime, and promptly just tossed out. Similar to the private funds rule, just, hey, this is not legal. So Gensler versus the Administrative Procedures Act has gone

really well for the Administrative Procedures Act. And of course, we have 17 or 18 state attorneys general that have now also sued the SEC filing led by Attorney General Genter Drummond of Oklahoma, alleging that the hostile treatment of the crypto space by the SEC has been unlawful. This is phenomenal to see. So we've seen this more and more groups pushing back against the SEC, bringing these lawsuits. Obviously, we're so far beyond the rule of law with this current administration. It's really interesting to think about just who would you attribute the fundraising success of this past election to in terms of fair shake and all of the pro-crypto candidates that were supported with unbelievable amounts of capital. I'd really say it's Gensler, Warren, and Biden, really.

Yeah. Another interesting development breaking in the last day or two, the Trump admin is mulling the creation of a crypto czar that I think will live inside the White House, potentially at the NEC. Their job would be to promote Trump's pro-crypto platform. Already names are being tossed out, including Christian Carlo for the position. Well, this is kind of above and beyond what I would even have known to ask for in terms of things that could be phenomenal for the industry. I just hope that they give the office of John Donenberg to this person. So John Donenberg is the former Elizabeth Warren, chief of staff that was brought into the White House to really implement just financial

terrorism against these crypto startups and companies. And I think it's only fitting that this new person who gets the CryptoZar role gets to sit in the number one crypto hater role. That would be quite fitting. So not entirely clear what the CryptoZar would do. There's now reporting that the czar would also be tasked with implementing. the quote strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which I continue to think Bitcoiners are off sides on this, to be honest with you. I mean, yeah, I don't see a law going through. I guess the question is whether or not the administration can do something outside of the legislative process.

I suppose you can do that. There's probably ways the executive branch can utilize the purse strings and the resources they have. I'm sure there's loopholes they can find. there's money they can spend. But then I don't think it would be very enduring if they did that. I think it would be very easy to undo. So I don't think we should even push for that because then it would be easy come, easy go.

If we were to get a true Bitcoin reserve, I would prefer that we'd come through Congress and it would be more democratic. Yeah, you wouldn't want it to be something that can get rolled back. So that kind of goes in the same vein as Operation Chokepoint 2.0, where the new head of the OCC and the Trump had made. administration can, of course, just implement fair banking practices at the regulatory level, but you do need this codified in law if you want it to not happen again. Yeah, and French Hill had a great tweet about OCP 2.0 yesterday.

He's running for chair of the Financial Committee, the House Financial Services Committee. Hopefully he gets that, told us that they would be aggressive in pursuing that if he got it. And actually in the hearing yesterday, the HSFC had a hearing and Gruenberg testified. French Hill asked him, do you have any, quote, do you have any evidence the FDIC examiners attempted to use verbal direction of banks about digital asset debanking to avoid foias? Grunberg says not that I'm aware of. In my humble estimate, Matt, I think this is perjury. How would he not have been aware of it?

We know this was happening left and right. Yeah, so we know for a fact that this happened, that they had learned from the reaction at choke point 1.0 to try and keep this stuff off the books, keep the guidance, informal, verbal, and avoid putting these 15% depository thresholds and writing wherever possible. So either Greenberg didn't know how his own agency was operating,

which is troubling, or he's just lying. I wonder if this is something that can be proved because they were so careful not to, to put this in writing when they spoke to the bank executives. They would literally get on the phone with them and say, you have a 15% deposit cap towards crypto, but they would not put that in writing. Yeah, so I am optimistic that we will not only end chokepoint,

both through the appointments at FDIC and OCC, pressure exerted on the Fed to knock it off the rolling back of bad rules like Sab 112 and maybe legislation, but then also we're going to go further and find out exactly what And that's really what I want to see. That's my stretch goal here. Yeah, I think we need to figure out the human beings that enacted this damage on the whole capital markets.

So moving on here, micro strategy. They're at it again. Oh, my goodness. They have upsized their latest convertible note from $1.75 billion to $2.6 billion. The stock is just crazy. It's the highest volume stock in the world this week. They have acquired another $51,780 bitcoins at the average. price of 88k.6, 88.6k per Bitcoin. So what an incredible story here.

I mean, congrats to them for persuading people to buy Bitcoin at an effective price of hundreds of thousands of dollars at a huge multiple because, of course, Microstrategy trades at a big premium to the underlying, which they're busy harvesting and converting into Bitcoin. I don't quite understand why anyone is now buying the stock. I mean, it seems a little dangerous, frankly. In theory, it should trade at NAV. It's not. But, you know, well done to them.

So last Friday, there was an 8K that Microstrategy put out and I tweeted about it this week. And in it, they disclosed that Sailor has lost voting control of the company. So he used to have super voting on this, just based on how the company was structured. With these equity issuances, he's gone below that 50% voting threshold. And I think there's a lot of logic to that to know the fact that he has gone below because they want to continue to raise capital. They're obviously trying to raise $42 billion here over the next few years. And it also allows them to get into certain indices is the other thing.

So if micro strategy were to get into some of these top indexes that everyone benchmarks against, more institutions will just have to buy micro strategy. So that's part of the angle here. But I wonder what happens. Like, could you imagine a world where in a risk-off scenario, Bitcoin's going down, you know, maybe there's a macroeconomic shock or something like that, why wouldn't micro strategy eventually trade at a discount to the net asset value of Bitcoin? Kind of like a closed-end fund. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the GBDC trade back when it was closed-end trusted. The flip side of trading at a big premium in all the trades associated with that is,

the possibility of trading a discount, there's no easy way to break it open and get the coins out. Yeah. So, you know, the same advice that pertained to GBDC back in the day pertains to MSTR, so, you know, be careful. Yeah, be careful out there. And I'm not trying to fud it because, look,

he's just below the 50% threshold. So he doesn't need that many more shareholders to agree with him. But is there a world where an activist could start to build up a micro strategy position and influence a liquidation here? it's a long ways off. Obviously, this thing is trading at a ridiculous premium to NAV right now,

and he probably has a lot of friendly shareholders around him. And I guess in order to actually get into this stock, you'd be driving up the price of micro strategy. So maybe it's a little far-fetched, but I don't see a reason why this couldn't trade a discount at some point in the future. Also on the same theme, we now have Metaplanet, Japanese investment firm, and similar scientific, they make medical devices. they've added to their Bitcoin treasuries and bought 124 and 215 BTC respectively this week.

So it looks like this is going to be a big trade here, where there's going to be a number of firms that try to do this balance sheet maneuver. But no one's going to catch up to sailor. In FTX news, Gary Wang, one of the co-founders of FTX was given no jail time for his role. The judge praised him for his cooperation. I guess he sang like a bird. but I don't know. I'm not too happy about the total lack of jail time

for the top executives here. Yeah, I mean, Gary Wang was involved in the fraud. Ryan Salem wasn't. Ryan Salem got seven years. Yeah, that should be revisited at some point. Coinbase is delisting WBT. It has been acquired reportedly by, at least in part, by Justin's son, from BitGo.

That's WBT. Coinbase also lists their own competitive BTC. asset wrap CBBT. So it could be the beginning of the end for WBTC here. Yeah, I think WBTC is just kind of in wind-down mode at this point. This was interesting. So Goldman Sachs is planning on spinning out its digital asset platform into a new company. The report said that it could happen over the next year to year and a half.

It would maybe be heading towards a consortium type of model. Kind of interesting. I would think that now would be the time where you want to bring a bunch of this stuff into the firm as opposed to spinning it out. But yeah, interested to see where this goes. I mean, you're going to live in a world where Sab 121's gone. You're probably going to get the SEC giving out exemptive relief via no action letters to a number of platforms. You know, maybe you get a market structure bill here pretty quickly. I think you want to bring this stuff in, not push it out. Yeah, the banks are most likely going to be able to touch crypto for the first time now here in the U.S. So it's a little surprising

that would spin it out at this time. Looks like the SEC is reportedly engaging in conversations with multiple firms around Solana ETFs. So Vennack, 21 shares, and BitWIs have all signaled their intention to launch a Salana product. This won't be far away. Although there isn't a, there's no CME futures contract on Solana, but I would argue that that should not have been a prerequisite to approve these Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. I think the SEC just got themselves in some gymnastics to try to come up with a theory for why they make sense. So I could see a world where Salana ETFs actually go out next year.

Yeah, and Salon has obviously been a huge winner in this cycle. Actually didn't mention it, but they're trading in a new all-time high as well. And, yeah, I think the SEC will probably just devise new forms of rulemaking for the ETP assets. So completely plausible that this could be a product. You could have ETFs on way more than just Solana. Yeah. Howard Lutnik has had an interesting arc here. he pushed very aggressively for the Treasury Secretary role.

His efforts have been conditionally rewarded. He's now been nominated for the next Secretary of Commerce, pending approval by the Senate. He's obviously been, you know, super favorable to crypto and a lot of Bitcoin. He is a service of out for tether. So definitely a good outcome for tether. And, you know, one of crypto's key champions in Washington now gets a cabinet role. So I wonder who takes over Cantra Fitzgerald. These are pretty good trades.

I don't know if it applies to all cabinet positions, but I believe you can sell your shares in the company for tax-free holiday. It's a great deal. That's a great deal. That's why everyone wants it. On another week, this would be a headline story. Options trading has opened for BlackRock's Ibit, Bitcoin ETF, tons of notional trading on the first day. I don't know how much that contributes to price action.

I know certain people are very excited about the emergence of options. on the ETFs. I just think it makes it easier for traditional firms to get involved. Options market in non-crypto world is unbelievably large. In the crypto world, options are still pretty small as a total percentage of spot volume and whatnot. So I would think that these ETFs are going to be massively successful. One slightly negative piece of news, Shaquille O'Neal is settling a class action lawsuit for $11 million for his role in promoting an NFT collection alleged to be unregistered securities.

Check, come on, man. What was this? This was the Astral's NFT project. I've never even heard of it. Oh, man. 10,000 Solana based Astrol's NFTs and the galaxy token connected to a Dow.

He has a judge in Miami ruled that they resembled securities, named him as a seller under the Securities Act. He was the face of the Astros project. On Discord, he posted a GIF from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street reading, I'm not expletive leaving.

Oh, okay. Okay. So, but he has, it's alleged that he did abandon the project, so he did leave. So what is your favorite Shaquille O'Neal basketball team that he was on? And what is your favorite Shaquille O'Neal movie that he's ever been in?

Oh, this is the section of pub trivia where I don't do well. Okay. So ask me about history, geography. I can do that. I don't know what teams he played for You don't know any of them? No

Okay Well What you tell me Big ones were the magic He was on the heat He was on the Lakers He was on the Celtics So I could have really just guess one

Almost at random He was on a bunch of teams I was in What was the cartoon Basketball movie Was he in Space Jam? Am I wrong about that? He was not in Space Jam

Well he might have been in Space Jam I'm not sure That was definitely Michael Jordan special. Larry Bird was in that one too. Okay, I'm Googling Shaq movies. He's been a lot of films. He was in Uncle Drew, show dogs, blended, grown-up, scary movie four, The Wash. Freddy got fingered.

What kind of a name for a movie is that? Movie called Steel. You're right. He was in Space Jam. Was he in Space Jam? Okay, so I actually got one right. All right. Mine would be Blue Chip, Blue Chips.

So that was with Penny Hardaway and Nick Nolte, I believe. this is before my time yeah we were speaking of before your time we were in a team meeting and i brought up a very obscure boston redsox player named brian dauback and uh no one knew who he was except for sean so i felt very old well um it's been seven years matt you have to know at this point that i don't know baseball and i never will it's true it's true um we have a new segment for you all today to celebrate Bitcoin's putative all-time high. I assume it'll hit 100,000 at some point. I hope we're not celebrating too early, but we're in like 98.4 land right now. And so what is the new segment? So we've compiled a list of 30 notorious no-coiners arranged by most effective to most clownish.

And we are going to do a fantasy draft with them. This is the Bitcoin Haders Ball. And so we're going to do a fantasy draft. You pick your number one Bitcoin hater. I'll go with my number one draft pick and we'll just go down the list. So these are all the people that told us for years that Bitcoin wasn't going to work, that it was a scam. We're going to pick our favorites. And I think the way we're actually ranking them is in order of effectiveness. So actually how good they were at trying to hinder Bitcoin's progress, although they did ultimately fail to be clear. Okay. All right. I like that. So you go first. I mean the first overall draft pick.

First overall draft pick, I take none other than the corrupt Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat senator from Massachusetts, who is from Oklahoma and does not do anything for the people of Massachusetts. Elizabeth Warren, just an all-time Bitcoin hitter. That's a good pick. I have to go with the one and only Paul Krugman. He wrote the economics textbook that I used in AP macro back in the day. Notorious Bitcoin hater, columnist, hates Bitcoin so much, right? So many columns about it. And I think he has been influential in the discourse in causing a certain segment of the population to dislike Bitcoin. That's a good pick. Paul Krugman gets a ton of mainstream clicks in his New York Times article. And I get sent them all

the time, have been for about the past 10 years, but people in my life telling me what I do is not a good thing to do as a professional career. So Paul Krugman's a good pick. I'll go with Jamie Diamond for my number two pick. Jamie Diamond leads, I'd say he's probably the most well-respected banker out there in traditional channels, certainly not among people in the crypto industry, but he has suggested that Bitcoin is just for criminals. He had some very strange congressional testimony with Elizabeth Warren, where she seemed to be giving him the answers to the test.

They seem to be in full agreement on just why Bitcoin was terrible. And then he had that weird CNBC appearance where he called Satoshi Satoshi. And he said it was coming. He said Satashi is going to come back. Satashi is going to come back and delete all the coins. So this guy clearly doesn't know what he's talking about, but a lot of people listen to him. And just a friendly reminder that if you're in the crypto industry and you are even thinking about doing business with JP Morgan, just know that your dollars, your fee dollars are going to support that message. So highly encourage anyone who has a banking relationship with JP Morgan that could go elsewhere, please do.

That would be me, actually. I have a relationship with them. You got grandfathered in through First Republic. I'd suggest maybe you change it up a little bit. Go to someone that actually supports the industry. My second pick is Alex DeVries, notorious hater of Bitcoin mining. And for many years, labored in relative obscurity to publish basically fake data on how much energy Bitcoin consumes and the carbon emissions. Eventually better people came along and were able to basically debunk his analysis.

but it really did a ton of damage for the longest time his work. So shout out DeVries. Now he's pivoted to being an AI hater, unsurprisingly. He did a lot of damage. That paper got a lot of reads. I'll go with Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett has just been, can't really blame him.

He didn't really dive in and understand the first wave of technology. Took him a while and didn't understand this wave, but really had no problem opining about something they didn't know anything about and having a negative opinion on it. My next one is Molly White. Molly White. She of the Web 3 is going great blog. She's been quite effective

at harassing just, I would say, the entire crypto space and create it. It's more of a zoomer approach to harassing crypto, creating consumable content, make us look bad. Web3 is going great, Molly. It is going great. It is going great. So take that.

I think she has some intelligent writing. She's smart. Yeah. We're not saying these people aren't smart. We're saying there have been good foes. Good foes. Good foes, but ultimately. Vanquished. Losers, yeah. Vanquished.

Who will I go with next year? I mean, so many good options here. I'm going to go with Dennis Kelleher, who leads an outfit called Better Muppets, or, as we like to call it, bitter Muppets. Better Muppets. What did I call it? He said, bitter Muppets. Better Muppets.

I mean, these guys are a complete Muppets. So this is a group that has tested. It's a trade group or something. I don't know. They raise money and they advocate for Elizabeth Warren Wing financial policies and they put out all sorts of research about how, you know, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are just for criminals. And you would say, well, hey, whatever. It's just a trade group. Dennis Callahar has had something like nine meetings with the SEC over the past year. It's wild. I mean,

the level of access that better markets had in the Biden administration was crazy. Yeah, and they're in every press mainstream article giving a quote about how crypto sucks. Yeah. So they do a good job of their evil task. Yes, they are the evil, the evil empire of just, you know, trade groups that raise a bunch of money and don't do anything. You know, we actually could do this for hours because our list is so long. My next one is Chris Larson, I guess, co-founder of Ripple. Yeah. Who's, you know, our first crypto industry participant, but he's not been an ally of Bitcoin. And they funded, I think, this opposition research with Greenpeace, $5 million grant Greenpeace, basically. got this environmental NGO to focus on Bitcoin.

And they've just been big time Bitcoin haters over the years. I think it's completely unwarranted. We don't need this kind of friendly fire. So special no thanks to Chris Larsen. No thanks to him. I'll go with Taleb, Nassim Taleb, who I think it's just a great author, generally speaking. I've enjoyed so many pieces of work by him.

But I don't know what happened to him because he was sort of into Bitcoin initially and seemed to understand it. And then he had a big falling out with, Safedine, right? Yeah, he did, especially over COVID. Yeah. So I think maybe that personal animus towards Safedin who wrote the Bitcoin

standard might have factored into his thinking, but Talab is someone who is very well respected and people listen to him. And so to have him out there just bashing Bitcoin has not been helpful over the years. My next one is Tim Swanson. I don't know if people know all the names on this list. He's just,

I think, one of the most odious he's him might be the person on this list I personally dislike the most. Okay. I don't even know what he does. I guess he works at Clear Maddox or something, which I don't know what that is. But he's just like this huge and big time hater. He compiles these dossiers on crypto people, including myself, just trying to discredit us.

And he's just a huge, gigantic, colossal loser in every sense of the word. And I just don't have enough bad things to say about him. So not to come off as petty, but you know, whatever. I am petty, okay? Screw these people and screw Tim Swanson in particular. Tim Swanson, all right. My next one will be, it's tough, tough list. We're getting down to.

We're getting to the less effective no-corneres at this point. Well, I'll go with Bill Gates. So Bill Gates has talked about Bitcoin in the past. Basically, he's just in the camp of it. It's just good for criminals. And, you know, people listen to Bill Gates. So I think in general that wasn't very helpful to the industry. Yeah, next up for me, and then after this,

I think we've reached the tier of like no corners that haven't been very effective. This next one is August and Carstens. How did the BIS hates Bitcoin, hates crypto. Kind of looks a bit like a mob boss. He does. And yeah, he's been an opponent. All right. Next one.

We are kind of scraping the barrel here. So I will go with Noreal Rubini, Dr. Doom himself. So he is called, what is he called? like 27 of the last four recessions, something like that. But, you know, doesn't really like the coins. No, not at all. Okay, so now that we're drafting in the 15th round or whatever, I think this is like when you draft a kicker.

Yes. And a defense in special teams. So these are like, we're now at the part where we're drafting in people that were not effective. Right. So my, these are like the ones that have amused me the most. Okay. So the easiest one is, of course, is this his name, Ben McKenzie? Ben McKenzie, he's the actor one?

He was an actor. Yeah. So he was in the OC, which I actually watched as a kid. I never watched that. And he wrote a whole book about how crypto's bad. He just had this second career where he decided to become this like moral crusader attacking crypto. And since it's become clear that, I know he also lost a lot of money, shorting Tether maybe or Bitcoin. Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is part of his lore. he's completely disappeared from the scene, doesn't tweet anymore. I don't think he's tweeted for months. But Ben, you know, it was amusing. We had a good time with you. All right, I'll go with Peter Schiff. Peter Schiff, a big gold bug, somehow just never came around to it,

but wrote a good book about gold back in the financial crisis days. And, you know, it didn't really work out very well on the Bitcoin side of things for him. And so for my last pick, we're going for no-coiners that actually like. and I think did add some value to the discourse. So I'm going for Mike Green. Mike Green. You had that big debate with him. I had a big debate with Mike Green.

I got a little heated in that debate. I actually spoke at his conference recently. He's at Simplify. Now they have Bitcoin asset management products, actually, to their credit. And I got the chance to meet Mike Green recently. And we obviously disagree on Bitcoin, but I think he's great and really sharp. So he's my favorite no-coiner. All right, that's a good pick.

Am I allowed to pick someone who's deceased? Go for it, yeah. Okay, I'll go with Charlie Munger. I already went with Warren Buffett, but his partner, Charlie Munger, you know, phenomenal, all-time investor, but a lot of comments about how Bitcoin was worthless for criminals and, you know,

the rat poison type of comments. So that is your no-coiner draft, formidable and interesting, varied group of people all united by their shared hatred of Bitcoin, all united in being wrong about Bitcoin. And, you know, hopefully we didn't jinx it here because this is 100K inaugural Bitcoin Hater's Draft and watch Bitcoin be at like $70,000 by the time this comes out. I know this would be an all-time top signal. Hopefully it's not.

That's your Bitcoin Hater's draft. All right. So I think that is it for the world. week. It is just an exciting time to be in this industry, even beyond just the price. I mean, it's funny because to me the price is, it's not really getting my energy flowing in the way that I maybe thought it would. And I think my mental model on this is, what did we hit in the 2021 cycle, Bitcoin? 65, 65, 67, something like that. I mean, and then you just go on this post-FTX regulatory barrage. So if you adjust this for where we were back then before everything kind of

fell apart, this is not a crazy move. It's a crazy move relative to the lows post-FTCs. But I think the more exciting part to me has just been the movement on the company side, the startup side. I think we're about to see so many more companies launched in the United States. Think about just the playing field now. So now you go to start a business. You'll probably have clarity on securities versus commodities here in 2025. You'd probably be able to be a lot of the market. You'd probably be get a bank account as a startup. We take these things for granted if you're not in crypto, I guess. But it's about to be a golden era of building things in the United States. Yeah, I think there's something wrong with my brain because I'm just not feeling too excited about 100K. I mean,

it's very symbolic. I think of all of the thresholds, the Bitcoin's ever hit 100K is the biggest one. I'm not even sure I ever thought we would get to 100K,000 to be honest with you. Yeah. And I guess the other big one is a million. That would be eclipsing the market cap of gold, by the way. So that's probably the ultimate long-term gold is matching gold, is matching gold. But I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I get a lot of excitement from the fact that this stuff is useful in the real world now.

There's real businesses that build on it that have real cash flows and provide actual value to people. I guess that's what I care about now. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, this is a technology that is widely useful. across a lot of different dimensions. Bitcoin's obviously super useful to people that want to preserve their wealth, you know, store value over time. Stable coins just came out of nowhere, all of a sudden just the next generation of financial technology. There's kind of a bitter sweetness when you achieve something you've been yearning for for well over a decade. I mean, the first crypto thing I did

was in 2013. I think you got started before that. I mined Dogecoin. That was the first thing ever did and got into Bitcoin after that. And I guess I maybe half thought that we would achieve this. But I also felt this way after the ETFs were finally approved. I thought that Bitcoin had succeeded. It had won. And that its success was basically guaranteed at that point. We kind of crossed the chasm, fully institutionalized that everything.

When you finally hit a goal that you've waited for for a decade, it's like not as fun as you thought it would be. Yeah. It's, well, it's funny. I've often thought about when I was evangelizing Bitcoin on the inside of a big financial institution, I would often find myself in a spot where I'd almost have to talk about blockchain and not talk about Bitcoin just to get people interested. And if you brought up something like Bitcoin being a global reserve asset, you would have gotten laughed out of a lot of rooms. And now that is just totally normalized. Now we're literally talking about Trump maybe doing a Bitcoin strategic reserve. How far we've come is incredible. It's unbelievable. And you've got Buckele posting screenshots from his mobile wallet app where apparently I guess he holds all the nation's Bitcoin on, it looks like on a smartphone. I don't know what's going on there. It's kind of terrifying. Bhutan now holds it. They're mining it. Other nation states have it. Presumably we'll try and front run the U.S. And yeah, I mean, it's being actively talked about

that the U.S. will maybe at least retain the Bitcoin, but perhaps even acquire more. And it's kind of Beyond the wildest dreams of even, you know, the Bittsteins and the Pierre Richard's. I mean, it's beyond almost anyone's wildest dreams. It really is. We need to reflect on that for a minute. All right. Well, I think that's a good place to leave it. We'll be back with another episode on Monday.

Everybody have a safe and healthy weekend.