The Wolf Of All Streets - $1 TRILLION In Bitcoin & Crypto Lost As Bear Market Fears Mount!

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

The crypto market has now erased more than $1 trillion in value as Bitcoin plunges into bear-market territory, ETFs see record outflows, and global risk sentiment continues to deteriorate. Bitcoin’s... drop into the high-$80Ks has sparked fears of a deeper unwind, while whales quietly accumulate and regulators shift their stance on digital assets. At the same time, Nvidia’s blockbuster earnings are clashing with growing AI-bubble warnings, Japan’s bond shock is threatening a massive yen carry-trade unwind, and macro volatility is rising everywhere from equities to FX. In today’s video, we break down whether this relief bounce is real—or just a classic dead-cat setup as the market faces its most dangerous moment in years.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Bitcoin peaked at around a 4.3 trillion market cap alongside the rest of crypto, which is now around 3.2 for all crypto, shedding a trillion dollars in market cap with a lot of people calling for an extended bear market now. Obviously, we had an FOMC meeting yesterday that was extremely divided and the odds of a rate cut in December have dropped on polymarket and other predictive market to be low 50%. There's a lot going on, some reasons to be bullish like Nvidia earnings and a lot of reasons seemingly to be bearish. I don't think I've ever seen people this confused and divided. Luckily, when people are confused and divided, I just call David from Coinbase to come on and tell us what's going on with the market. So let's do that now. Let's go. Let's go.
Starting point is 00:00:56 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the show. I've got David here joining the two of us were opining before the show about how hard it is to be in your 40s and get jet lag traveling. That's how old we are, but we also should probably talk about markets. Welcome back, David. Of course, this started with you saying your throat hurts and you were just on an international trip. So here we are. Thanks, God. Apologies in advance.
Starting point is 00:01:30 You sound great. Let's talk about the market. So let's bring up a Bitcoin market cap here. We've got Bitcoin trading right about 91,000. It went to a low about 88.6. Actually, 88 was just sort of a level I've been watching for six or seven months since we sort of broke out of consolidation and got back above a hundred. So I had a lot of bids there. So now I'm a buyer and need you to confirm my bullish bias.
Starting point is 00:01:54 But here we are. we are. Altcoins still generally down more than Bitcoin. Bitcoin down, not much of a bull cycle in 2025 when we look back at the prices a year ago or even, you know, at the beginning of the year. How do you put this in context of all those sort of predictions we made and the expectation that we were going to have this booming Q4? Yeah, I think that there's a Bitcoin exceptionalism thesis that's going around right now as well. And to be honest with you, I do think that probably we'll see Bitcoin stand out more so than the altcoins because there's at least a lot of institutions that are playing in this in a way that I feel like all coins don't have a ton of liquidity
Starting point is 00:02:31 in them at the moment. But I am still constructive. I feel like at this point, I'm kind of encroaching on naive optimism kind of territory, but I kind of hold to my whole firm in my thesis, in part because I do think that liquidity, as long as I'm looking at the custom liquidity index that we have correctly. It's kind of showing that this is par for the course in terms of liquidity dipping down in November and picking back up in December. And I think that the inflection higher is going to correspond to a move higher with crypto more broadly, but Bitcoin specifically. And I think that in part to part, there's still a lot of institutions out there who have cash on the sidelines, who are not invested yet, but have done their homework and
Starting point is 00:03:16 want to be involved in crypto. And when they say that, generally, mean they want to buy some Bitcoin. So I think that's going to happen, but probably we'll need to get through this kind of low liquidity kind of period. We just got good earnings data coming from Nvidia. So at least it seems like the tech bubble, for example, like a lot of people I think have gotten wrong. So very likely, I think that when we see that the Fed comes out on December 1st with the end of quantitative tightening and then on December 10th, I still believe that they're going to come out with cuts and that is massive, that's a very big point for the macro side of things, then we think, I think that like probably we can continue on with the rally as it is.
Starting point is 00:03:58 So lots of unpack there. I mean, as you look at the Bitcoin chart specifically, and I agree with you, there's Bitcoin and everything else. We've been all saying that for years, right? So there's clearly not much liquidity in all coins outside of the ones that have ETFs or have treasury companies or however you want to look at the institutionalized all coins. So we have a, what I would call normal 30% bull market or Bitcoin's been to bull market since a year ago, right? Bull market retrace. So it's taken a lot of time going sideways in the hundreds, but here we are at 90,000, you know, just under 30% down from the all-time highest. We see that five to eight times every single bull market or cycle. But on the
Starting point is 00:04:40 flip side, the 50M.A on the weekly is broken, which has never happened in a bull market. A lot of traders look to that. And we have a lot of, I guess, concerns about the Fed and the macro. Do you think that that's why, like I see, maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's anecdotal, but I see incredible division. And we have for a while, but there's either like it's obviously a bull market retrace, it's going to all-time highs, or the cycle is over. The Reddit post said October 6 was going to be the top, and it was, and we should start bidding, you know, 30 to 50,000 here. And it seems like people are diametracky, metrically opposed on that view. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:19 So I subscribe to the idea that we're going through a case shape recovery. And this doesn't necessarily mean that things are going, in fact, it precisely doesn't mean that we're going to see a bounce back towards new all-time highs again. Like I think that over the next, you know, six weeks, it's going to be very difficult for us to reclaim like the 126 level on Bitcoin, for example. But from probably early December onwards, I could see us. kind of grinding back again. And in large part, that does depend on what happens with the Fed.
Starting point is 00:05:52 And I hate this because there doesn't seem to be a lot of endogenous kind of factors helping us on the crypto side of things. I think regulation might be one of them. And I think that's something that people are missing. Maybe that's also something that can come in December. But it's so contingent on what happens on December 10th. If the Fed is able to cut another 25 base points, and I think they will, very likely I think that they could still continue with those cuts into the first half of
Starting point is 00:06:16 2006, but a lot of people just counting that at the moment. And I had an old boss who had a great saying. This isn't his saying. I think this is an old, you know, phrase in Wall Street. But it's like bull markets are not, rather, bull markets do not die on their own. Bull markets are slaughtered by the Fed. And what he meant by that is like these bull markets end, only one of those rate hikes really start to come in when borrowing gets to be,
Starting point is 00:06:43 too expensive, that's where you don't see the liquidity anymore, and that's where markets just don't move at the moment. So I think that if this happens, and honestly, I think that it was more a case of Powell trying to reset expectations on what happens in December, although there's a lot of complications with fair labor statistics, not having a lot of data because of the U.S. government shutdown. I think that all these things are contributing factors. I still think that that insurance Cup of 25 bibs kind of leaves us with the ability to see more cuts in the first half of next year. And that could actually support a rally. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking right here at Polymarket. I hadn't actually brought it up. I just sort of seen the reports of it.
Starting point is 00:07:25 But it looks like no change at 64% is leading in a 30 and a 25 bips decrease that 25 cut you're saying is 35. So actually your opinion right now, strangely, which was 88% at the last cut. right has now dwindled which is why it's so hard to look at these because they change in real time absolutely and we saw the minutes yesterday and i'll be honest i was more surprised uh that like more than you know one board member is actually unsure about what the right decision is for december i thought that you know powell was going to say this uh in the last press conference say like okay like we like you know, a summer cut is not a done deal. And I kind of figured this is what he has to say.
Starting point is 00:08:11 Like I kind of figure that like the probability of like 88, 90% odds that we've, that we're going to be at a cut was too high and he needed to reset that to 50%. When he did that, I was like, okay, great. That means that markets have kind of reset here. We are like, you know, we've de-leveraged in the crypto space. We've kind of de-leveraged in the traditional finance space as well. So actually from positioning perspective, things were a lot cleaner. But the Fed Minutes obviously have changed things.
Starting point is 00:08:39 And we've seen this drop now from like 50% down to 35% odds of the rate cut. And that matters. I mean, this is where we're not in an easy environment for borrowing. We saw that credit risk is still kind of an issue. Long end rates, you know, they're, they're cheating between that 4% and 5%. And people aren't sure like if the cost of capital is going to get too high for people, people are losing their jobs in the real economy. So I think there are a lot of difficulties in trying to read the tea leaves here.
Starting point is 00:09:09 Totally agree. And the economist, as much as I like to say, oh, it's a hit piece because it's against my thing. But, you know, crypto got everything it wanted. Now it's sinking. So I had three of my quote unquote normie friends who are maybe slightly interested in Bitcoin because I am, send me this article. So this, this went around. And it went around to the non-crypto natives everywhere.
Starting point is 00:09:34 And it makes some very interesting points. Obviously, it says that, you know, we secured our biggest victory, spot pick what ETFs, clear regulation, institutional adoption, mainstream legitimacy. Despite these long-fought wins, Bitcoin has plunged more than 25% from its highs and the market has shed over $1 trillion, revealing that structural fragilities, leverage, speculative flows, and correlation to broader risk assets never went away. Now, it's true, obviously, that we got the huge bump basically after the election and we've somewhat been sideways since, even with all of this. this good news, leaving many to wonder what could be the next catalyst if we had all that. But I would also say it has not been correlated to risk assets, as they're saying, because everything else, gold's gone up, stocks have gone up, everything else is up and we're actually down, right? So where's that correlation? I've just tried to kind of absorb this and decide
Starting point is 00:10:24 whether I'm like just emotionally mad that they wrote it or if they're wrong or if they're actually right. Yeah, so two things with this. Like back in mid-2003, I wrote a paper. about how Bitcoin provides a diversification sleeve in your portfolio. And I get asked, oh, but like, you know, doesn't that mean then that when, you know, other assets are going up like, no, like what that diversification means precisely is a moment like this where, yeah, other things might be going up, Bitcoin is going down. But like when those things are going down, Bitcoin's going up. Like that's what it means to diversify your portfolio. And I don't think people get that. They think that like, oh, it means it goes up, but it goes up less.
Starting point is 00:11:04 or it goes up more. And it's like, you know, I think we're going to look back and use this as a data point and realize like, okay, Bitcoin continues providing that diversification benefit to a lot of portfolios. The only real of any portfolio is 5% of your allocation to something completely, you know, idiosyncratic. And Bitcoin proving that it doesn't go up when other things don't go up is emotionally hard, but actually exceptional for investors and sharp ratios. Sometimes when your thing's uncorrelated, it goes down when other things go up, unfortunately.
Starting point is 00:11:34 So number two, sorry, I interrupted you. No, that's exactly right. And number two, I would say that this is a great headline as far as I'm concerned come from the economist. Like I think that a lot of my normie friends might not want to admit this, but the like when something ends up generally on the cover of the economist, but even inside the articles, that generally means that is either the top of the bottom. Like it doesn't make its way into the economist. until like it really gets to that inflection point. So when I see something like, okay, that's another line for me in terms of like a bottom indicator on where the market is.
Starting point is 00:12:17 So I'm glad when I see something like that, to be honest with you. Yeah, it's like the economist is like the mainstream investors equivalent to your Uber driver telling you about something or the guy cutting your hair, right? Or in both directions. But usually those are, I guess, the euphoric tops more than the bottom, which I think is what they're likely calling here. I can tell you we have some interesting data that whales are definitely accumulating. And we knew that whales were dumping actually on the way down.
Starting point is 00:12:42 That was a lot of the selling pressure. You see it on chain, hundreds of thousands of coins. Well, now a number of entities with a balance of 1,000 Bitcoin or more has absolutely skyrocketed on this dip. So you got to wonder like, you know, who's selling into all these. It's the same chart here. But yeah, you know, obviously every time. time there's a dip. If you're close to the bottom, you see we can selling to strong hands. I mean, it is the mechanics of the market. Yeah. And if it's uncomfortable for you, then like,
Starting point is 00:13:13 that's probably a good sign. I would say that smart money is definitely trying to buy back into this at better levels. Like I said, I think that probably this is going to be selective. I don't think that this is going to be widespread across the entire crypto complex. Probably it's going to play into Bitcoin, probably some of the majors. I think maybe some of the alts are going to be. benefit from this, but there has to be a good idiosyncratic story behind it. We're not in the froth period where everything is going to do well. But if you're saying like, okay, like, all right, there's going to be hip three like development on hyperliquid or like, oh, there's going to be, you know, like a change up in terms of more like buybacks and burns on certain things or a
Starting point is 00:13:56 fee switch on a uniswap. Like these are the things I think are going to be supportive for individual tokens, but I think you're going to see a lot more players do bottoms up analysis rather than just kind of, you know, obliviously buying whatever kind of token that's out there. How are you viewing treasury companies right now? I mean, we've talked about this a couple times over their trajectory. I was obviously a outspoken and unpopular skeptic in the Bitcoin community of the Bitcoin treasury companies specifically just because I didn't understand how you beat Bitcoin without, you know, complex financial. engineering do you think we're going to go into merger and acquisition season here uh do you think
Starting point is 00:14:38 that this narrative is dead do you think that we see a few select winners i mean it's very clear that we had a very quick bubble and pop i think we can all agree on that yeah i think that what we are still in the middle of is dat 1.0 and i think that there will be a dat 2.0 cycle at certain point and hopefully and i'll because i kind of sided with you on a lot of those names I don't think all of them, why I don't think you can kind of throw the baby out with a handbasket or whatever the saying is. But certainly we were in that PVP stage and I think that we're kind of going to the consolidation stage at the moment. You haven't seen a ton of debt buying over the last few weeks. I mean, there was some support coming from a strategy on the Bitcoin side of things, but they couldn't even defend like a lot of the big levels that we saw like in the 9800K zone, for example.
Starting point is 00:15:30 Well, he doesn't really try. he buys way above them. Yeah, absolutely. So what will dat 2.0 look like? I think that 2.0 will look a lot like the analogs in traditional finance. And I'm talking about for if you're familiar, of your car gills, your trafiguras, like places that treat basically commodities and actually trade them in the sense of what's the duration kind of look like in terms of the risk. How do we hedge it? How to detect ourselves? And so if you start treating, crypto and block space as an asset for a lot of the dedicated companies that are out there who depend on block space for their business purposes. I think that there will be a subset of
Starting point is 00:16:15 that's that will emerge who are going to be there to actually trade that stuff and actually say like, okay, like now how do we not only hedge it but actually grow our position inside of these specific games. So I think that's what that 2.0 is going to look like. And it's not going to be this pure accumulation play that we saw in that 1.0. And I think that's going to be a lot better for our space than what we have right now. I think we've also seen a very clear differentiation of the pros and the
Starting point is 00:16:48 amateurs when it comes to digital asset treasury companies. And to me, that doesn't mean the amateurs can't catch up. But you look at Tom Lee and Michael Saylor and those guys have found ways to continue to buy as price goes down. Most of the other ones got some money, bought very close to the top, and have no ability to literally do anything because they didn't realize that if prices went down, there'd be no thirst for their convertible notes or any of the engineering that they were going to try to do a strategy type technique.
Starting point is 00:17:22 So now they're just holding on with Bitcoin 25% down or, you know, Salon and Ethereum, 30% down from their buy price and they can't do anything. Yeah. I don't know if they didn't know because there were a lot of people. I think yourself, you know, there were a lot of stratify or extradify folks who also pointed that out to them. So I'd be remiss to think that like they had no clue that that could happen. That like basically we said this law looks fine when the cycle is moving higher.
Starting point is 00:17:52 But like I think this is part and parcel of what has kind of like led to the speed down. side that we've seen in our space. Like we saw that headline from a few weeks back of like one of the debts actually buying as part of a, you know, reallocation of their portfolio. And, you know, like these things, I think, have a, you know, a knock on effect in terms of like how the selling pressure actually, you know, negatively affects us our space in a, you know, leverage kind of way. and it takes a bigger hit to us. So I do think that some of these things are probably happening in the background as we speak.
Starting point is 00:18:37 I don't think that all of this is happening on exchange so we don't have full clarity of it. It's probably happening OTC are the things. But, you know, I think that the fortunate thing is, at least since October 10th, I think a lot of that speculative froth is now gone. Yeah, October 10th was very, We haven't even spoken since October 10th.
Starting point is 00:18:59 Do you think that we're going to see some bodies floating to the top still? We keep hearing rumors of either market makers or potentially some exchanges or hedge funds and such blowing up. Have you seen evidence of any of that? I mean, that was a massive event. I know it was mostly retail traders on Binance, but it was still just a monster event. You have to imagine that there were some victims we don't know about that could be meaningful players in the market. And I think we have seen it to some extent. Some of this has happened in Defi, so we've kind of wrote it off a little bit, but things like stream finance, for example, I mean, that was definitely a victim of the October 10th de-leveraging.
Starting point is 00:19:39 And I think that had not been for that, you wouldn't have seen, I mean, be fair, you often have to question if you're offering 20% yield on stable coins or something, it's like, well, were you getting that yield? So already, I think there were people questioning the premise behind something like that. But some of those kind of defy victims of this, I think that they are starting to come to the four at the moment. But if you're looking at just purely how much perp and option open interest is there relative to the total crypto market cap, I mean, we were at levels of around like 10%. We're now down the levels of like three and a half. 4%. So a lot of that speculation has now been washed out. I would say we've been flat since that point on October 10th. So yes, some bad things have continued to happen, price action-wise, as well as some of these names. I would say that at the very least, we're not seeing, at least on
Starting point is 00:20:41 the perpetual future's open interest and other things front. Like, it doesn't seem like there's more like that's coming off at the moment. So then going back to the economist and sort of the view that we've had all of the catalysts and we haven't seen the market really reacts. Do you think that something like the Clarity Act or some unknown catalyst that maybe you have on your radar could be the thing that sort of ends this correction and sends things back up? So I kind of push back against the idea that like we got all these positive things and the markets and move up. They did move up. I mean, did people forget that we did get an all-time high. It was just that it happened in July. To be fair, it lasted for a few days. It didn't last long
Starting point is 00:21:25 enough for us to kind of be able to enjoy it. So I definitely appreciate that fact. But, you know, there are things like the Genus Act and they're positive. And yes, the Genus Act has more due with stable coins. But tangentially, it does affect our space because these things happen on crypto rails and we care about that. I do think that now, like a lot of people have been concerned about whether we would see progress on a market structure bill. And that was because of the U.S. government shutdown. And I think that that was the wrong way of looking at things because we were kind of saying like,
Starting point is 00:21:59 oh, well, nothing's going to get done during the government shutdown. And I was like, actually, probably the best things are going to have happened for us, at least on the crypto side of things, was that we had a government shutdown because effectively had all these congressmen, all these senators, Stephen on Capitol Hill, twiddling their thumbs, not being able to do anything
Starting point is 00:22:14 because the government was shut down. So they had their staff, their skeleton, and SCAP of like 10 people or whatever, and they're just kind of sitting around a room going like, oh, let's look at this crypto market structure bill. Let's see what's going on. We got some headlines out of it. People might have forgotten from like two weeks ago. They weren't the best. But I think ultimately what's coming out now is that like we actually have bills coming out of the Senate that correspond to the Clarity Act in the House that was passed. This is now going to go through the Senate banking and ag committees probably over the next few weeks. And I think that the odds of
Starting point is 00:22:47 something happening over the next two to three months in terms of getting to the Senate floor, getting a reconciliation with the clarity bill, and getting this to President Trump's desk, I think, are very high. Yeah, I agree. I think that we get this done. I think it's still a priority. I'm just wondering if maybe that's what shakes the tree and wakes up all coins. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:08 Well, I think that's what we are going to find out next. Who are the winners and losers of all these things? Or who are the winners and the bigger winners of all these things? Certainly, if you were on the fence about being a security or commodity, I think like the clarity that we're going to get from this, like forming from a market structure bill, the fact that the CFTC is going to be the likely regulator for cryptocurrencies, I think all these things are going to benefit that cohort of tokens. So speaking of some of these amazing things that have happened, we obviously got the Salana
Starting point is 00:23:41 staking ETF, which set a precedent that we're likely to get staking for other ETFs, BlackRock Form's new trust amid early uptake of staking focused Ethereum ETFs. We had seen a number of issuers with existing ETFs already filed to change them to staking. How important do you think this is? Also in ETF News, Fidelity launched Spot sole ETF. F Sol had 2.1 million inflows on first trading day. Not massive, but nice to have inflows in a kind of bearish trend. I think going back to Beasol, which shows just how important it is to be first.
Starting point is 00:24:13 They had like $58 million or something like that in the first day and the XRP. was $1 million more or something like that. I guess still there's a pretty big thirst for alt-coin ETFs as they launch. They've all had inflows in a period where Bitcoin's had outflows. But like, you know, just frame kind of, I guess, the ETF progress and the staking specifically. Yeah. So we, of course, have seen staking ETFs of Solana come out already. You know, we've had the Rex Osprey.
Starting point is 00:24:39 We've had Bitwise. And a lot of people thought that once those things launched, that we would see inflows into Solana it didn't necessarily materialize because of the market environment that we're in and people have kind of just given up on that I don't think that's the right approach I think that there's still going to be an opportunity set for these other names that are to be coming out and obviously the SEC has a new general standards as far as the approvals for these things so they're going to run a lot faster than they did previously because previously you had to wait 240 days max before like you got an announcement from it and the SEC has been very clear hey pull those
Starting point is 00:25:15 19 before filings, like, actually, like, we're going to have a whole new, like, a system where these things are going to be approved within 75 days. So I think that was good news, but it wasn't actually pricing my markets. And I think now that we're starting to see some of these headlines come out, people are starting to realize actually the real inflows coming into Seoul or other altcoin names. And, you know, you had to abide by certain rules. You have to make sure that you have a futures product for at least six months, for example, which exists for a lot of these alt coins, you know, Coinbase, for example, like,
Starting point is 00:25:49 Yeah, there's like 12 that are already listed that now qualify on Coinbase alone. Some of them, even like Shibinu, right? So, I mean, there's some pretty exotic things they can do right now if they want to. Right. Now, is this going to be the, like, you know, same as what we saw for, like, the Ibit or Bitcoin ETFs? Probably it's going to be a fraction of that. I mean, like, if you look at ETH being like 10 to 25%,
Starting point is 00:26:14 of the flows that we saw for Bitcoin, it's very likely that these things are going to be a similar kind of like fraction of either ETH or of Bitcoin itself. But I still think that it's going to be a positive kind of catalyst for a lot of these all coin names that we have. First of all, did your title change? You had a global head of investment research and did you used to be head of institutional research? So we started putting out our research to our Coinbase 1 subscribers. So we made it like basically we have a title that I think is a lot more clearer to people in terms of like every time I would say to people before like, oh, I'm the head of research. I'm going to say. So like, what does that mean?
Starting point is 00:26:56 So I was like, okay, head of investment research to make it very, very like very plain. Yeah, I just happened to notice that. I was like it was always institutional now. It's investment research. But it was going to lead to the next question, which is I know we never talk specifically about any inside baseball with Coinbase. Right. but obviously Coinbase is pushing the envelope in a lot of directions, one of which is buying Echo and then having the launch platform, which I believe Monad is live now, right?
Starting point is 00:27:25 Is there institutional interest in these other more exotic crypto-native things that are being built elsewhere and on Coinbase? Or are those primarily right now retail plays? Like, are Treasury companies going for ways to find yield? are institutions participating in private sales, right? Like, are these things that are, I mean, we were shocked. Who was it that did J.P. Morgan and Base recently had an announcement together. And I was like, wow, base got the J.P. Morgan.
Starting point is 00:27:57 So there's some things there for sure. What does that look like? Yeah, yield for sure is a massive consideration by a lot of the institutional players. And like we said at the beginning of the call, I was out in Sydney and Singapore. over the last week, and I had dinners with a lot of these institutional clients, and many of them are invested in debts and other things. And, you know, they are cognizant of the fact that they are sitting on a ton of Bitcoin or ETH or whatever kind of token, and they are trying to find ways to get yield from it, whether that is, you know, playing, you know, more stratify things like
Starting point is 00:28:35 asset lending or agency lending kind of models or playing directly in defy. I will say that is there any institutional interest and some of these tokens further out the risk curve? I think yes, there definitely is. You brought up Monad, but I would say that, for example, the privacy theme that we saw play out over the last few weeks. And right now it's kind of trading in the middle of the range, at least the middle of that. Like if we're looking at Zcash, for example, between that 500 to 700 kind of these levels, I would say that you saw a lot of institutions actually talking about it. And many of them brought up the same ideas that we saw on the retail side of things.
Starting point is 00:29:12 Okay, is there too much centralization of holdings among institutional names for things like Bitcoin, for example, which is very public about its ledger and other things? Like, does that mean that we need to consider what's going to happen with in the EU by 2007 when they start implementing more of these KYC AML kind of procedures? When they start banning, like, you know, privacy wallets and other things, like do we need to kind of care? And is this a big theme that's going to develop in our space? So I would say very much institutions are thinking about these kinds of themes. Really interesting. And do you think that they are participating heavily in these altcoin ETFs that we talked about in the staking? Or do you think that's just a bunch of retail?
Starting point is 00:29:55 Like the XRP and the Solana ETFs launch, they're doing well. Is that a bunch of people who just love XRP and Solana who are buying those because they want to support their thing? So until those 13F filings come out, I would. say we were just kind of guessing, I'll be honest with you. My guess would be it's probably more retail than it is institutions. So we'll find out when it kind of comes out. But I don't think that's like going to be forever. I think that's probably the first instance of these things. And then as they mature, probably you'll see a lot more institutions playing them because they have the optionality of like, okay, how can I hedge myself by owning this, uh,
Starting point is 00:30:38 you know, XRP or whatever, like all coin ETF because it's high beta, I can either like, like, you know, go long, short it, like in a way that kind of protects me against my other positions or I can play options on it or I can have like other instruments I can utilize for it. So I don't think we're at that stage yet, but I think we're going to get there in the future. Before I let you go, what else is on your radar? I mean, is there anything else I might have missed that you're excited about? We kind of talked about potential catalysts being the clear Act, but anything even into 2026, maybe even an appropriate question, is 2026 going to be a good or bad year? Do we believe in the four-year cycle, which means it's terrible? Or have we
Starting point is 00:31:21 broken free of those chains and can expect that some of these tailwinds will finally kick in? So my view, and I think it's becoming slightly more popular, although not really the mainstream one right now, is that like the four-year cycle doesn't necessarily lend itself very well to the current environment and in large part that has to do with where demand comes from now. A lot of demand comes from institutions like ETFs or Dats or other places. And I don't think that's going to end yet. Like I think that some of the discretionary selling pressure that we got from minors no longer will be as meaningful as it once was.
Starting point is 00:31:56 So I would say that I'm not necessarily using the four-year cycles in analog, although there are a lot of psychological kind of effects to that. So I tend to think that we are going to be. dependent a lot more on liquidity and what's going to happen on the macro side of things. And I think that people are focused just on what's happening in the U.S., which is important. I'm not going to say that it's not. And by the way, like if you're looking at that and, you know, I think about liquidity from the perspective of the Fed balance sheet, you know, U.S. minus T.J.
Starting point is 00:32:26 like a balance minus versus repo facility. And liquidity has actually been picking up over the last few weeks in the U.S. But thinking about what's happening in Asia and other places. And I'd say that right now, it's kind of. it's kind of hard because the picture is a lot easier than it used to be like the tick china m1 versus m2 money supply like it's telling you some very very different things but i think ultimately it's going to hash out in favor of uh crypto markets now the other positive thing is i think that at least this is also giving people the cover to start working again because so much of us i mean myself included yourself like we all focus on the price uh but then we don't think enough about like well what's actually getting built here because I'll be honest with you like for the last year we've been kind of focused on stable coins and other things that the stratified contingent has wanted and not enough about privacy not enough about prediction markets not enough about gaming I mean like all the
Starting point is 00:33:22 things that I think are still important to our space that have kind of fallen by the wayside and I'm kind of being like like hyperbolic here I don't think a lot of people forgotten about all of them like prediction markets have still like kind of had their day in the sun but like I think these things are going to become a lot more important in 2026. So I want to, I want something to happen on the AI crypto theme. I want something to happen on prediction markets. I want something to happen on tokenized equities. Like, I think that this will happen.
Starting point is 00:33:52 And probably we're just kind of going through a blip right now. And, you know, this is the flip side of what happens when price action isn't the best. Yeah. We start questioning the bear market and thinking that we're going back down to zero good times. And then everyone says nothing's being built. it's horrible and there's no mainstream adoption and the yada yada yada we know the narratives david thank you so much for joining really appreciate your time hope you feel better everybody you can give him a follow on x there at david with a one young right d a v1 d u o n g and i'm
Starting point is 00:34:25 going to bring up the old one i just did um and that's all we've got for you today david man i hope we catch up soon in person and have a great day thank god thank you everybody we'll be back tomorrow for the Friday 5. Have a good one. What's up, Wolfpack, Scott Melker here. And today's show is powered by easybitcoin. Dot app, the app that rewards you for buying and holding Bitcoin. Set up a recurring buy and earn 1% extra in Bitcoin
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