The Wolf Of All Streets - $100K This Month? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

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Hey guys, how are you? Hey, what's up Mario? Hey man. Mr. Weisberger, how are you, sir? I'm doing just dandy, Mario. How are you? Good, good. There's a bet on Polymarket, the gentleman that had his phone confiscated by the FBI.

There's a bet on whether Bitcoin will reach $100,000 this month. What would you bet on that? Digital? Oh, man. mean i hate i hate answering questions like that because yeah there's it's a essentially it's a digital option for which is interesting the price uh my gut tells me it's got to be well over 50 likely uh but you know just because it just has to hit it it doesn't have to stay there.

And we've come close already once and we're bound to have at least one more rally in us before we kind of get another pullback. But we're I think we're in a trading range. I don't have any option models in front of me there. Let option guys in the audience, you know, price it. But if I had to guess, I'd say somewhere between 50% and 70% likely. Where's Polymarket at? Because I haven't looked. That's a good guess. So it's a 56% chance now.

It was a 72% chance yesterday, obviously because the market was better. But if you go back to November 9th, so six days ago it was as low as 20 chance so obviously because of the market's performance as went up all the way up to 72 and back down to 56 in november look it's only two weeks right so you're talking about uh you're talking about a two-week option and you know slightly more with a holiday in the middle that has traditionally been challenging uh and in this particular case with more of the new money coming in being U.S based a long weekend is likely to be less uh less buying pressure more vulnerable to liquidation Cascades and we've seen those in the past during bull markets so that wouldn't be crazy I think that's probably why the numbers are as low as they are. The chart, I'd love to

hear Peter's, I think he, Peter's up here, love to hear what he thinks. But, you know, it feels very normal to have a consolidation after you were in an eight month trading range from 50 to 70, you know, fairly wildly within that, but 50 to 70, and then boom, you break out. And now all of a sudden, we've been between you know 80 and 90 for a week you know over a week and it's like okay you know did the estate does it pause here uh seems fairly normal too but we're coming into that time of year in december where you know kind of all the bets are off when it comes to money flows etc so i guess we'll see peter where do you stand on this been a while we a while. We haven't spoken. Yeah. I mean, to find a daily bar that is below the previous day's bar,

you've got to go back to November 4th. I mean, this is a powerful market. I mean, people are talking about the fact that we're correcting here. We haven't had a correction. We haven't even made a lower daily low. So, you know, it wouldn't be a big deal if we did. Actually, I got out of some a little bit too early. I've got orders in. I'm wanting to buy a 9,000, 8,000, 9,000 dip from the highs. So, yeah, you look at Bitcoin on a monthly chart, we're just in lift-off phase. I mean, we're, you know, first stage is still burning. So, $100,000 for me, I mean, I'm not going to bet it. Why would I bet it?

I can bet it by buying Bitcoin. I'd rather own Bitcoin than trade some stupid polymarket. But, yeah, I mean, I think we're in good shape. And the other thing is, I think the stock indexes, stock indexes are vulnerable. And so that's, to me, not negative on Bitcoin, because you can see a rotation, you can see money flee equities, it's got to go somewhere. Probably no better place for it to go than Bitcoin. Hey, Peter, I have a question for you. Sorry, Mario, just something to ask the one question.

There's been a lot of talk, and Mario is probably going to ask about this anyway, that a lot of the Bitcoin dominance we're seeing in the alts kind of selling off a little bit more than Bitcoin, particularly Ether. Are we seeing a higher correlation of the non-Bitcoin crypto market to that vulnerability in the stock market, do you think, where Bitcoin is somewhat delinking? Or am I basically looking through my own orange-colored glasses? No, I mean, statistically, you can say that. But, you know, is there a correlation that they're both going down now i just happen to think what i've always thought is you know bitcoin is crypto crypto is bitcoin um yeah so what we're

seeing is we're we're seeing the leader we're seeing the legend pull away from the other it's that's all so yeah i maybe to a certain degree you've got the squirrel. What I refer to as the squirrely money, the squirrely money that plays, you know, Sol, ETH, altcoins, probably a little more correlation to the stock market. But again, my contention all along is that we're going to have the day come where pretty much all assets are going to be not valued in US dollars, but valued in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the ultimate store of value.

So you're going to buy a car 20 years from now, and they're going to advertise the car and sell it for so many. But you wouldn't expect that in the current cycle. It will take a couple more cycles to get to that level i'm assuming no no i think this cycle goes between you know uh 130 160 170 in that area topping in august of next year then you know then we have another correction where that correction goes who knows but not in this cycle could we continue seeing those outflows we're seeing from the gold ETFs into Bitcoin, and could that play a role in Bitcoin decoupling

from the rest of the crypto market and the stock market? So essentially, we're starting to see Bitcoin as a separate asset to the rest of the crypto industry being a store of value where ETH, Solana, and other alts act more like risk assets. Yeah, it's Bitcoin, and then it's all others. Bitcoin and then the pretenders. But we haven't seen that decoupling yet. We still see, obviously, to a different level,

but whenever Bitcoin is up, the rest of the market is up and vice versa. We don't see the rest of the market respond, you know, kind of respond similar to the stock market while Bitcoin responds more like gold. So you have Bitcoin, gold, rest of the crypto market, stocks. Yep.

So that correlation, those two correlations haven't been separated yet. No, not yet. Do you think that will decouple in this cycle? Not in this cycle. Okay. Before going to Justin, Mike, good to have you as well.

We'd love to get your thoughts. And how was your show with Dave on Monday? Where did you guys conclude on Monday? Well, I appreciate you starting out with mentioning the bet to Dave. I think from all the crypto people's standpoint, if I bet Dave, Dave bets favorable for Bitcoin to go to $100,000. I bet against it. I'll probably lose. It'll be better for everyone.

So it's a good trend we've had in these bets. But overall, I mean, I think we've had a paradigm shift in this space. We all know we have a complete Republican sweep and a president who's Bitcoin crypto friendly. And it's just a question how far it goes and where it stops and trying to trade it in between is, you know, for people like Peter who are much better at it, I do appreciate his more mature voice and guiding us in this way, particularly with this acceptance of Bitcoin is taking some old ones. But to me, the macro big picture is what you're seeing happen in this crisis now, which are probably reached a significant point where the Fed's done easing. And they don't point out exactly why, but they do know point out why because rapidly advancing risk assets are increasing so much, it's virtually impossible for inflation to go down or actually go negative when you have the stock market at two times GDP and it's advancing at 30% on an annual basis.

So what we're seeing now is I think the bond vigilantes are kicking in. And it's clearly the case that U.S. bond yields compared to the rest of the world are really high. Now, this is just look at China. We're more than double China's yield. Now, China's not a real open market, but it's the second most significant market. It's exactly what's going to be happening with our new administration. This is a strategic decoupling from China. So I like to point out there's been a few books I've been reading, most notably the one where there's no free trade by Robert Lighthizer.

And we need to factor in there's going to be significant tariffs, a completely emboldened US government, Republican on steroids, that is going to be a bit disruptive at first and a bit volatile. So overall right now, to me, the key thing is Bitcoin has not had that test yet. It would say S&P 500 dropping 10%,

God help us if that ever happens. And what it's showing us is it's showing that divergent strength that dave has pointed out forever i just look at it as right now to me overall risk assets are just way so expensive and i just remember that quote from benjamin disraeli what we anticipate seldom occurs compared to when trump was too about elected in 2016 no the whole world started in price for what's happened in the past. Now, we know as traders and investors, that's what the last thing you want to do. And I just point out, markets are just so expensive. So I'll just tilt over things I know well. On a global basis,

we see commodities are really showing severe deflationary forces, as we should, as the US kicks in in its tariffs. And the key market I've barely been watching is copper. Copper's starting to break down, which means the next inordinate to burn is the U.S. stock market has to go up. And if it doesn't, that's when we'll see bond yields decline and even some pressure on Bitcoin. But right now, we're buying the rumor. Plenty of buying the rumor. Yeah, I don't know if the – by the way, I'm not sure if you looked at the news. I think Berkshire Hathaway started making purchases again.

One of the two investments, two large investments they've done. One of them is a swimming pool supplier,, one of them is a swimming pool supplier, but one of them is Domino's. I think it was Domino's Pizzas. Yeah, it is. Not sure if that links. Why would he make a fast food investment? I'm not sure if he believes that inflation will still continue being high

and a cheap fast food could be an alternative to more expensive food and expensive groceries. Let's just focus on that a little bit first. Berkshire Hathaway has a very high level of relative cash. Now, I remember getting really bullish and long in 2009, and they were one of the top ones who were very low levels of cash. And we need to bring this out.

It was a headline in the Bloomberg Terminal about how total money markets reached $7 billion. As a measure of the US stock market cap. That's extraordinarily low. That's about 11%. So it's really weird. You have to be careful when people point out some of these things, even my colleagues in Bloomberg Terminal, compared to 2007, before the great financial crisis, cash is closer to 15%. So just a key thing to remember, a burgeoning very overweight cash at the moment. Yeah. Peter, you had your hand up?

Peter, are you there? I'm here, Peter, before I go to – can you hear me? So I'm not sure if anyone can hear Peter. If anyone can hear me, it's not – Yeah, I'm there. Oh, you're good now. You're there now. Yeah, go ahead.

I can hear you now. Go ahead. Fast food business isn't new to Berkshire Hathaway. They own Dairy Queen. Fair. So not too much to look into. Have you seen the news on Buffett back to buying? Is that an indication of anything?

No. No, he's just, you know, he's probably, we've had a sell-off here it's time to start nibbling where he sees value and peter i want to ask you another question before going to the rest of the panel how do you compare so one thing i've said is as probably the the most simplistic analysts here on stage at all times is i just look at the market and say probably going to repeat itself looking at previous cycles looking at the parabolic rise we've seen since november 5th how does that compare to previous parabolic rises in previous cycles um and do you think the market is overbought and last question is does that mean i remember in the early days early this year when the market hit all-time

highs um faster than expected. Dave, we had a discussion, me and you back, I think it was with you, we had a discussion on whether that means the cycle, this bull market will be shorter than previous bull markets because it was a lot more aggressive. And now we're seeing the same aggressive rise in Bitcoin and the rest of the market repeat itself. Does that mean the cycle will be shorter than previous cycles if you compare historically? Short answer, no sorry no good day my short answer is no uh what we saw

which was off cycle was a shift in the supply demand curve a a big shift in the supply demand curve by unlocking uh u.s uh investors to be able to buy Bitcoin via the ETF. And so that shifted everything. I think that if you take that out and you look at what's already started now, I think we're right on schedule for the same sort of cycle, which is weird because I've been a skeptic of the cycle. Scott and I have talked about this a lot. You know, we have three data points.

I mean, OK, do you expect the fourth to be there? there's no way you're getting statistical significance but here we are and it seems to be playing out that way i i'm starting to wonder for those fans of sci-fi if if satoshi nakamoto was harry selden and if anyone i'm sure a bunch of people here will get that reference uh but the the the it looks to be playing out Keep in mind that there are multiple catalysts that could continue to make this cycle play out the way previous cycles were. Corporate adoption, sovereign adoption probably being the two most important ones. with possibility that we had a demand supply shock, which caused a rally that wasn't expected into the halving. And by the time the halving happened, that rally was already over and we saw nothing post halving for eight months. And now here we are. And after that eight months and like previous cycles, here we go. And we'll see. Obviously, I'm not an astronomist, but it certainly feels like there's

that potential. I'm certainly, I'm actually loving the fact that we're getting a lot more bare sentiment. I mean, Mike McGlone and I talk about this all the time. Neither one of us is ever comfortable if everyone tells us we're right. That's the worst thing. Justin, Peter? Sure. I love that reference, by the way. Harry Seldon, that's from the Foundation novels.

So it's a way of saying that Satoshi could predict the future through his logical mind. I think that's a beautiful reference. So first of all, I'd just like to say how unbelievable exciting this time is right now in crypto. I've been in this industry for over a decade now. And I mean, just the fact that we have the president of the United States, the most powerful politician of the world, we have the most richest and the most influential person in the world in the form of Elon Musk. And we have the biggest fund in the entire world in the form of BlackRock, all supporting cryptocurrency. Sorry, I just came back from the dentist. My voice is a bit weird because of anesthetic, but I'm trying my best here. I mean, this timeline is just one of the best I could have imagined.

I mean, this is just incredibly bullish for cryptocurrency and our entire industry. And yeah, that's made me just so excited these last few weeks. I've been struggling sleeping a little bit, to be honest, with all of the success that we're having. And it's just, it's wonderful. You know, we've, as an industry, I think, or maybe more so, I think I would say humanity deserves to have this revolution,

deserves to have this technology. I think that's really a beautiful thing. I mean, I have to comment on what Peter said earlier. Everyone knows I'm a Bitcoin critic, so I don't think this is the time or place to really discuss that. But for me, the original vision of crypto is really more in the alts.

So obviously that's the area that I find far more exciting because that's where we actually get to make a difference. Can you expand your thoughts on the alt markets performance relative to crypto since November 5th? And what does that indicate for the rest of the year? Because first, meme coins have surprisingly done well, at least surprisingly for me. I thought the meme coin cycle could be coming to an end. But looking at a lot of the alts, the top tier alts are doing well, very well. But then if you look at the, go down the curve and you see the smaller tokens, the VC back tokens are still lagging the rest of the market.

So we'd love to get your thoughts on the rest of the market outside of Bitcoin. Yeah. And I think as most of you know, I also became an Ethereum critic, actually. It's making my own life harder, it seems. But I think the situation we're in is that like, yeah, so it's like Bitcoin didn't scale and now Ethereum is not scaling. And I think scaling is actually really important. And I think that's what puts Solana in such a incredibly powerful position today because, and others like it,

but I think Solana is really taking that role, whether you like it or not, right? Like I think you just need to acknowledge that's the reality. Like that's, that's the zeitgeist. And I've always thought that, that I think that in order to overcome a competitor in order to overcome the network effects of like a dominant player, like Bitcoin, like Ethereum, I think you need to be like, yeah, I need you. Your tech can't just be a little bit better. It needs to be 10 times better.

Right. So I would say like, yes, Ethereum was 10 times better than Ethereum i would say like yes ethereum was 10 times better than ethereum and i think when ethereum didn't scale i think yeah solana was 10 times better than ethereum um but i i struggled to think of what next thing is 10 times better than solana um so like gaining those network effects are going to be really difficult for that next generation of blockchains coming around. Unless, you know,

the, the, the, the top chains really screw things up again, which is always a possibility. Yeah. Now I want to go to Travis, Travis, one piece of news I was looking at today,

not sure how significant it is. Not sure if you've read it either. It's the 18 states have already filed to sue the SEC and the commissioners accusing them of, let me read out here, unconstitutional overreach and unfair prosecution of the crypto industry

under the leadership of Gary Gensler. We'd love to get your thoughts on that, Travis, and also the rest of the markets. We haven't spoken for the last time. We spoke probably,

the market was almost 40% lower than it is today. It's been a nice little break here. Travis, you there? Yeah, can you hear me? You hear me? While waiting for Travis to unmute, almost 40% lower than it is today. It's been a nice little break here. Yeah. Can you hear me? While waiting for Travis to unmute, David, can you hear me?

Hello? I hear you. I'm not sure. Is the mic working for the rest of the, oh perfect, yeah, not sure if David, can anyone hear David or Travis?

Yeah, I can hear them. I can hear them. Dave, you can't hear them. I hear Travis. Oh, perfect.

All right, cool. Yeah, Dave and DB, I'll let you guys just go back and forth between Travis and the rest of the panel that I cannot hear. David, because I cannot hear them. So I'll let you guys and Buzz as well if you can hear them as well. I'll let you guys. 18 states thing, I wasn't sure if that was meant to be a sort of farewell to the Gensler administration or if that was potentially setting up for the new administration to maybe have some cases to work on settling and then setting precedent through some of those cases. I don't know. Those are my knee-jerk reactions for when I saw that yesterday.

I mean, obviously, the timing is pretty unlikely to be coincidental, right, that it happens a week after the results of this major election. So a couple of things that I did want to say on Bitcoin, just in terms of kind of price action and the setup into the rest of the year is I haven't heard anybody so far mention the Bitcoin strategic reserve, which to me continues to be like the likelihood of that happening or not is such a major shift to the backdrop for Bitcoin's price action over the near term and well into 2025 and beyond. And I don't have that good of a sense of the likelihood of it happening. It feels like something less than a coin flip to me right now but i i think it's also worth thinking through just how information around the bitcoin strategic reserve

like new information could come to light like what the news flow looks like that because i think maybe it's not a super near-term thing like say maybe it's not a super near term thing, like say, maybe it's not a first 90 days of the Trump administration type of thing. But maybe it's the kind of thing that you could build support for over the course of 2025. And then look to get done at the back of the year, or maybe sometime in 2026. But if even if that was the timeline, if you had a series of positive announcements or just sort of like different influential politicians saying supportive things about a Bitcoin strategic reserve, and you sort of had those little nuggets sprinkled out over the coming months here, that in and of itself could be very, very supportive

for Bitcoin's price. Because I think imagining a sort of cycle top base case price range type of thing, doing that with or without a Bitcoin strategic reserve, those are two drastically, drastically different numbers in my head. I think without the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, you know, Peter's mention of kind of the 120 to 170 range, that makes sense to me. Peter, I don't know if you were using Fibonacci extensions to get there, but you can use Fibonacci extensions from prior cycle lows to get into that kind of range. But if you're talking about the United States government TWAPing into 1 million Bitcoin over five years, which would almost certainly spark

a sovereign bidding war, now you're talking about like 250 bare minimum. And I think closer to maybe 400 plus is the type of base case that I would have in a situation like that. It's so bullish that it almost feels sort of silly to sit there and pontificate on. But I mean, there is a bill that Cynthia Lummis introduced that is in existence and there's plenty of chatter about it. So. Yeah, I would agree with you, Travis. And, you know, first and foremost, I got to say, none of this is investment advice. So obviously go about and do what you need to do in terms of talking to your professionals but travis hit it on the head is that the sbr is definitely something you know that you know i've been tracking um you know as travis alluded to 1 million bitcoin you know being purchased over a five-year period and the other thing about that too is that there's apparently a statutory retention period uh and it states that to

better ensure the long-term stability and security of the strategic Bitcoin reserve, any Bitcoin acquired pursuant to the act will be held for a period of not less than 20 years. And so that's pretty sticky money right there. And so this is also really interesting, too, is that Pennsylvania just recently, as of the last two or three days, introduced their Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Act. And Republican Pennsylvania representative Mike Cable said, by integrating Bitcoin into our reserves, we're not only protecting Pennsylvania from inflation for relentless impact, but also positioning our state as a leader in financial resilience and innovation. And so not only, as Travis alluded to, could you see sovereign nations becoming very focused on trying to get into this quickly, but you also have states here in the United States that are also going to be doing that, too, potentially,

if they follow what Pennsylvania has done here, which obviously could or could not happen. And so, yeah, there's a lot there from the SBR state that I think is very, very interesting to continue to track. And as we've seen, the cabinet nominations that Trump has put in place, you know, J.D. Vance, for instance, you know, for those that, you know, this is all public knowledge, by the way, you can go and find all this. J.D. Vance had a things that have utility are actually things that we should be regulating correctly and protecting and giving and having the investor class be able to participate in, whereas meme coins have been effectively untouched. And again, this is J.D. Vance's words. Obviously, VP president, VP elect right now. And so he's opined about this. So we're in Travis knows we've all been around the space for so long. The fact that we're talking about, you know, elected officials and obviously new administration talking about these things is just mind-blowing.

For anyone who was around in 2016, 2017, I remember when I had Travis talk at one of my first family office conferences in 2018. I can't even think back to that point where we were like, OK, the president's going to actually be thinking about a Bitcoin reserve. And so if you just take a step back and think about where we've come as an industry over the last seven years it is just tremendous one thing real fast i'm glad you mentioned that the pennsylvania strategic reserve because i think that when i saw that yesterday my, my knee jerk reaction was that maybe what you could see is a series of states that have, you know, conservative slash libertarian slash, you know, Bitcoin minded. Take Wyoming, for example. Take Texas, for example. And maybe you see states that implement it at the state level over the next coming months or quarters. And then you use that to build a consensus to get something done at the federal level.

Like it's not hard to imagine that being a path to this thing, as opposed to like, you know, we're going to get this done in the first 90 days of the Trump administration. Agreed. we're going to get this done in the first 90 days of of the trump administration agreed i might as well then um so i yeah i just want to echo again how incredible it is and just just to give context i remember back in i think it was like 2014 15 a congressman would just say the word bitcoin and like even say it in a negative way, like, oh, I don't like this Bitcoin thing. And us Bitcoiners would all be celebrating. You'd be like, oh my God, wow, a congressman said the word Bitcoin. Wow, we're really making it now.

It's absolutely insane where we are now and the type of support we have today is just incredible. It's just worth celebrating, you know, we've come so far as an industry and now we're really in a position where you've got that institutional acceptance. So now I think that the next thing is really working on adoption, right. And, and, and getting past the mass collective delusions that, you know, just purely speculative things. I think that's madness. But I think we can do so much more with this technology in terms of actually using it,

in terms of actually using it for payments. We can start using it for voting systems. We can start deploying more DeFi on a higher level. This is the stuff that gets me excited. And now with the US becoming a haven for cryptocurrency, the next four years are going to be beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I tend to agree. Going back to the polymarket topic, I know we were talking about that at the beginning.

What do you guys think the chances are of a true Bitcoin reserve happening, happening say within the next six months i think earlier in the discussion people were kind of thinking maybe this is something to be iterated on over time you guys think that rings true that it's going to take a while yeah i'd say i'd say less than 20 i'd say uh 10 to% chance in the next six months. Even as a critic of Bitcoin, I still have to agree. I mean, to me, it's all a big mass collective delusion. I know the dot-com bubble or the housing crisis or the tulip bubble, but you can all go along and cheer for it.

But it's still going to happen, most likely. I have to agree, even as a critic i mean the interesting question here is how good of a trader is donald trump and if you believe he's a good trader you're going to have a different opinion than if you think that he's just kind of going along with this thing and bopping along doesn't really care because a good trader would tell you accumulate Bitcoin first, then make the announcement, because obviously everyone's going to pile in. We all know that if the U.S. actually passes a rule that does that and that by the time they start buying, Bitcoin will probably be double where it is now as other people try to front run. So it's a really interesting question the the logistics of it do seem strange enough that it

makes you doubt the likelihood and i think that's exactly what you just spoke to like the steps in order for this to happen i mean i if this thing really started getting legs underneath it, I mean, going from 90 to 180, I doubt it's only that much. I would think you would get that in a week or 10 days if Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, the likelihood of it actually started getting real legs behind it. And then that could potentially just be getting started on the price move. It becomes sort of difficult to reason about. that could potentially just be getting started on the price move. Like it's, it's, it becomes sort of difficult to reason about and it's, and you can kind of lay that alongside how easy

it is to reason about the government just saying, uh, or, or, or Trump just issuing an executive order for what he promised to do at the Bitcoin national conference in July, which is look, when we seize Bitcoin from criminals, we're just not going to sell it. We have this big stack already. We're not going to sell any more of that. And to the extent that we get any more through other criminal investigations and these sort of things, we're just not going to sell it anymore. And that strikes me as such a short putt relative to a Bitcoin strategic reserve and actually getting that implemented and the likelihood. I've heard people say different things about whether or not you would need legislation

to get the Bitcoin strategic reserve done. But what I've heard from people that know a lot more about this sort of thing than I do is that almost certainly through executive order, you could just stop selling seized Bitcoin. And so that is what strikes me as just a much more, you know, doable thing that I would put that as at a 75% plus likelihood of happening. So I think you could put it at 100% assuming that Biden doesn't sell it before Trump steps into the White House. I would just, again, you know, everything I say, you know, please, you know, disclaimers amount. I would just say that, you know, as of where we are right now, it appears that the new administration incoming right now's priorities, as you saw with the creation of the Department of Efficiency with Elon and Vivek,

it seems that I think one of their first priorities is to eliminate as much overspending and waste, you know, from probably a day one, you know, for the first 100 days is to really do that. And it appears that, you know, that department was given, I think, about a two-year window to be able to get that done. So in the kind of the prioritizations of things, you know, obviously would love to see an SBR and would love to see Senator Lummis' bill, you know, become something that happens. But I think if we really want to look kind of, you know, if we're thinking 6, 12, 18 months down the road, you know, I think the first priority is, you know, we're probably going to be seeing a focus more on cutting waste and maximizing where tax dollars are currently going to. That's obviously just my opinion. You could take it with a grain of salt.

I do, you know, it is obviously something that he talked about. It's something that Senator Lummis and, you know, others in, you know, obviously around the policymaking table have been talking about. But I just, from what I sense and what I see, just, you know, watching all of the same things that you all watch, it feels like they're going to try to cut waste first before they do something like this. On crypto regulations, it seems to me like the most likely fast path is a de facto regulatory framework that happens through a series of settlements and no action letters from the SEC and the CFTC combined with executive orders out of the White House. And those are all things you can have happen in the first 90 days. And I think, you know, just say two years ago, if we were contemplating sort of the pace or the likelihood of something like that happening, I would have scaled back my expectations. But I mean, it is undeniable that crypto had a very major influence in this election. The Fair Shake PAC was the largest

single issue PAC, and it was extremely effective. I believe it won every single race that it backed, including knocking off Sherrod Brown for senator in Ohio by backing Bernie Moreno. I think that the fair shake pack put over $50 million behind that. And, you know, Sherrod Brown, this is like a multi-decade, you know, lifelong swamp creature. And we knocked him off. Crypto did. I think there's no chance that Moreno wins without all the support that you got. So it's like we do incredibly, almost unbelievably swing a significant stick in Washington. And I think that makes me feel like the likelihood that we get that de facto regulatory framework that I just described and we get it pretty quickly, say in the first 90 days, I think there's actually a pretty high likelihood of

something like that happening. And then you come along behind that and then we start talking about a market infrastructure bill, FIT 21, some of these other things, stable coin type of stuff. And we have a red wave. And so I think that there is a lot of support to get that done. It would be my base case assumption that we would get that done by the midterms. But there's a pretty big difference between, say, first 90 days and like, you know, 18 months or something like that from the start of the Trump administration. And so, you know, I'm real excited to see what happens on the first part on that kind of settlement, no action letter and executive order combination specifically as it results as it relates to crypto. Yeah, I want to propose something or say something that is a non-zero chance, probably a single digit integer chance, but definitely something to consider, which is you're thinking way too small. I mean, look, Vivek

believes that the that 75% of the Washington bureaucracy is bullshit. He has Elon with him. The one place which is undeniably true is that the United States is the only place in the entire world with two financial regulators for for financial products. We're the only one. So if you think that, if you don't, I would literally be stunned if they're not actually looking and talking about making sure that whoever gets nominated to CFTC and SEC, part of their mandate is to figure out how to restructure the agencies to work together, which is a problem within FIT21 because it gets very prescriptive in terms of that. The most important part of FIT21, which I think will happen almost on day one, is Hester Peirce's original idea of a safe harbor.

And that has a lot of meaning to it. And we've talked a lot on the space of what that can be. But I think that that possibility is not remotely priced at meaning, actually having a regulator that just has new rules for financial industry instruments, securities or not, and new rules for derivatives, whether on commodities or not. That's the logical thing to do. We all know it is true. We know it would save tons of money from an efficiency point of view. But I think that that's something you have to consider. That would be ridiculously bullish for Bitcoin as well as the rest of crypto. And I think it's something that has to be considered because if they're not looking at it, then honestly, I would be very disappointed. since we're talking about yeah thank you um since we're talking about the bitcoin reserve um i'd like to touch on some of other some of the other promises made by trump which i would argue are even more important than just bitcoin reserve and number go up which is the

promises he made to free ross the promises he made you know also in relationship to the tornado cash guys and to stop putting developers in jail. We have a lot of good cryptocurrency people that are in jail right now and have been in jail for a long time. We have people that set up ATMs that are in jail. We have people that set up privacy protocols that are in jail. And like Ross, we have people that set up decentralized markets that are in jail. And I just think that's so wrong and i think we should keep our like eyes on the prize as well in terms of what what really matters here what's really important what's really good for crypto in the long run and i think what's also part of that ethos is privacy you need to stop criminalizing privacy and one of trump's promises

which i would argue is more important is free freeing these people that don't belong there, frankly speaking. I just wanted to point that out because I just think it shouldn't be lost in the conversation that we're having about promises made. It is going to be interesting to see what this administration and this Congress with the various oversights, what they do along privacy for crypto and just, you know, where you draw the line with. Sorry about that, where they draw the line with self-custodial wallets, you know, code is free speech speech that sort of thing um you have seen the line get drawn in this prior administration in certain places i don't think that means that those things are necessarily set in stone but i think it also is a pretty safe base case assumption that if enough bad actors or if bad actors are using something to a large enough degree, that the U.S. government is just going to go after that.

And I think Tornado Cash is actually the perfect example where there was very um strong evidence that you had north korea and other you know bad state actors that were using this thing in size hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of illicit funds throwing flowing through this thing and and then you just sit there and you ask yourself, like, what's to come of that? Is it reasonable to assume that the U.S. government is just going to turn a blind eye to that sort of thing in the name of liberty and not overstepping freedom of private transactions, basically. And look, I'm a crypto guy. I'm a Bitcoin person. I'm certainly a libertarian, small government minded, like beyond a shadow of a doubt. But at the same time, I think I can have, you know, I understand where the US government is coming from, regardless of the political leanings or a Republican versus a Democrat administration, which is just that bad guys laundering billions of dollars to go do bad of stopping that while also allowing, you know, privacy of transactions for people that aren't doing anything bad is not easy to do.

I think what's important to keep in mind, there is a distinction here, right? Because Tornado Cash was a decentralized protocol, right? So like putting the T the tornado cash in jails didn't actually stop bad guys from using it and i think it's the principle that's important here when a bad guy uses a m16 to shoot up some people do we put the manufacturers of the gun in jail right when when terrorists use a toyota pickup truck to to fight a guerrilla war, do we put Toyota executives in jail for creating that Toyota? I actually think there is a distinction. It's a good way of framing it, Justin. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. There's an important distinction. So I think there are cases where if

there is some sort of centralized control, like they have control over who can use it and can't use it, yeah, they're guilty for letting North Koreans use that system. By the way, there's no dispute over North Koreans moving hundreds of millions of dollars for Tornado Cash, by the way. That definitely did happen. But they had no control over that happening because they just wrote some code and people used it. And for the same is true also, if criminals use Bitcoin, does that mean we now ban Bitcoin? of course not and tornado cash is is that exact case and that's why this case is so important because we shouldn't put coders people that write code for decentralized protocols we shouldn't hold them to account for whoever then

uses that permissionless protocol right completely agree justin and as we're just kind of getting uh to the top of the hour here i do want to give uh-DeFi AI, we do have a sponsor today that we're going to be doing an AMA with. Just wondering if you guys kind of have a stance as we roll into the AMA here about the difference between the enforcement and should coders be put into jail? Like, how do you guys feel about that as we transition into the AMA here? I'd be surprised if there's anybody on stage that was supportive of putting coders in jail. I would be too. I was hoping to do a little bit of a mic test there. C-Defi AI, can you hear us? Yeah, all good.

Can you hear me? Yeah, all good. Can you hear me? Yeah, you're good. I was just getting your opinion on that and how you feel about putting coders in jail as a builder in the space as we transition to the AMA. Got it. I mean, you already mentioned

it. It sounds silly. It is silly. So it's probably silly. I mean, obviously, if we're not talking about large-scale hackers, then essentially a tool is a tool. So whatever people do with it, the actions of those people essentially define what they choose to do and who they choose to be. So it's not the coders, it's not the people who, you know, actually

program it, but it's the people and their decisions. I agree. And why don't you just give us an overview of what C-DeFi AI is and also let me know if that's how you pronounce it. It's a little bit of a mouthful when I first saw the brand name. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, you pronounced it correctly. It's not straight on point. So it's C-DeFi AI. And yeah, by the way, thank you for bringing me up here.

And I think I learned something new in terms of, you know, everyone sharing their opinions. So that's awesome. So, I mean, as the name suggests, we are basically everything that's, you know, everything about crypto. We have CeFi, we have DeFi, we have AI. It's not just because of the hype, but we actually do have some very useful purposes for it. So essentially, we are a non-custodial aggregator of text indexes, yield protocols, all sorts of different staking, farming, lending, etc. So the idea is basically to be the ultimate crypto hub and to provide access to crypto for absolutely anyone and anywhere on the go, on your mobile, on your computer, etc.

And yeah, we're essentially looking to aggregate all of the chains, all of the different wallets, and basically have everything within the same UI, make it very convenient, make a very seamless experience for the users. So that's about us. And it's chain agnostic as well. So can you go into a little bit about uh what your goals are there uh yes so i mean as i mentioned since since we're aggregating everything um it's i mean it's it's kind of pointless to aggregate everything and just to you know essentially become google of crypto things uh you know you can you can look but you can't touch um so the chain agnosticism is one of the key, I wouldn't say ideas, but I mean, it's one of the largest pillars in crypto, I guess. It's something that can not only unite the different communities, as currently I do believe we have a huge problem with the crypto tribalism. Everyone is, you know, I'm a Solana fan, I'm an ETH fan,

you know, I'm like a SUI fan, etc, etc. Or well, vice versa, you know, you can be a hater of something in particular. So our idea is basically to make it, you know, this like a seamless experience for users. You know, you can trade whatever you want, you can, you know you can trade whatever you want you can you know take part in whatever you want and so on so again the idea is to make it essentially as web like as close to web to experience you know like you don't get you know somehow left out you know if your friends are going somewhere and you're like oh i can't do that because I don't have a particular wallet. It makes sense. You mentioned that you guys are basically aggregating everything. And as you're building out that

stack of building in these aggregation endpoints, do you feel as though the underlying technology, like what you guys are plugging into, is there to make a truly chain agnostic experience and tools like Wormhole and whatnot? Good question. And it's something that we've been asked a lot in the past already when we were talking to some of the big guys in the market. So I would say it's 50-50. There are definitely some protocols, some companies that either have something, you know, almost there, but not quite there.

And also there is, you know, quite a bit of development that's going in-house to actually make those things work for us. So what's the biggest challenge that you guys are facing right now to kind of build that truly chain agnostic atmosphere? I was just about to say. So, I mean, the funny thing, it's actually the shift in the paradigm.

And what I mean by that is, I mean, we knew that Tom ecosystem is big, but we didn't know it's that big, right? You know, similarly to, like, and it's something that you guys touched upon. Like, you know, the rise of meme coins, that thing basically changes quite a few things in the market. You know, that obviously changes the, like, retail focus. It changes, you know, to some degree, it even changes institutional focus because once they see certain demands, certain popularity, they start building and buying, et cetera, et cetera.

So that's one of the problems, I would say. Because Tom, let's say a couple of years ago, Tom wouldn't have been on our radar. I mean, sure, yeah, it's say a couple of years ago, Ton wouldn't have been, you know, now a raider. I mean, sure, yeah, it's important, and, you know, it's convenient to some degree and so on, but, like, it didn't play such a crucial role. So, yeah, that's obviously, you know, one of the problems. And, yeah, the other thing is a lot of platforms,

they also go in about the same direction, not at the same scale, I would say. Most of them will be focusing on aggregating ETH, Polygon, and Solana. That would be pretty much it. Obviously, since we're trying to chew on a bigger piece, it's a little bit harder to manage. But yeah, we're getting there. Just building off of that,

and I do have to admit for what it's worth that when I first heard about 10, I kind of dismissed it a little bit as a big tech chain and kind of thought, hey, this chain probably isn't going to align with what I believe a decentralized future should be. So I kind of thought, hey, this chain probably isn't going to align with what I believe a decentralized future should be. So I kind of agree with you there. But you talked about just the mass amount of chains that you guys are working with and that being kind of the big challenge.

And a couple of years down the road, do you see that we're going to have consolidation in these number of chains? Or do you actually think that we're going to have more chains going forward as chain agnostic becomes a true reality? It's a very interesting question, and I love that you asked it. So here's the thing. I mean, it's something that I've argued for such a long time with my friends about. So there are basically two distinct powers here.

So on the one hand, it's becoming a lot easier for anyone to actually create. Well, I mean, your own network, you can fork and just have some additional features built into it. On the other hand, there is a limited number of things that we can actually do through blockchain. I mean, you can't have physical food delivered to you through blockchain, for example, right? So obviously, that would be somewhat of a limited factor. factor um so it's i mean it's it's really funny to see like a lot of uh you know like uh layer two like building on bitcoin at the same time essentially doing the exact same thing so like obviously it's a race you know whoever gets there first uh essentially gets like all the money the

popularity of all the girls um so it's it's a race in some sense. So I think a lot of blockchains with very, very similar technological capabilities, as well as their core purpose, they would have to fight for the exact same spot. And there should only be one left in that particular niche um but on the other hand i think we're gonna see like a massive race to like private blockchains that would be like used within you know specific companies for specific goods so i think mercedes um announced that they're building their like private mercedes uh oriented blockchain for you know all sorts of different things. It's kind of like an acceleration towards specialized chains. Yeah, yeah.

That makes sense. It's a good take. I like that. But how do you feel about chain tribalism? Do you think that when cross-chain interoperability becomes more of a reality here in the market, that there's going to be less tribalism? I know when we talk to people who are in the meme coin trenches, a lot of them are like, oh, I'm only going to use Solana or I'm only going to use Base. Do you think that tribalism calms down here in a more chain agnostic world um i do hope it will come down um and one of the reasons being you know i i obviously do hope that we're going to be uh you know that essential peacemaker you know between the different tribes uh but also i think

it's like so obviously we're not the you know the only or the first, you know, entity that decided to do something like that. So it's not going to be necessarily that, you know, one particular technological, you know, stack will solve all of those problems. But, you know, it's, you know, step by step. So some invention here, some invention there, you know, you already get, you know, a nice variety of blockchains already aggregated, you know, in one place and the other place, and so on, sometimes they overlap. So so that's, that's obviously going to be one thing. The other thing is, chain tribalism is both about, you know, the technology and the users. So the technology is obviously getting there because it's essentially a business for a lot of companies to aggregate a lot of different things and this way to win the race.

But on the other hand, it's down to the users. So as users become a lot more intelligent in terms of the crypto usage, I think they're going to kind of negate those particular tastes for different blockchains just because of the logo or the funny memes and so on. So I think they will be getting a lot more into the actual underlying technology and the purpose of those

blockchains. But again, we get quite a few degens getting into crypto nowadays, as you mentioned. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, speaking of those degens, let's talk about institutional adoption. Do you see chain agnostic future really playing a big role in institutional adoption? It's, I mean, it's a little bit tricky. So institutions would likely be adopting those chains that, you know, they either have, like they either see some some monetary future in, or they would be adopting those blockchains that they would use themselves as the underlying technology. I mean, it's not really clear for me.

Let me put it this way. So, like the institutions, they're obviously looking at it right now. Some are already getting into it. I think there was some piece of news about Hedera and the HBAR, well, some bank, I think, or some VC was looking to get an ETF for it. So it's not like, I mean, it's one of those blockchains, it's one of those coins that I wouldn't really think about immediately. But there's obviously some usage for that particular piece of technology, as well as the monetary gain that the fund is going to make. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know. They have the money to research and to do whatever they want.

So it can go either way, to be fair. Got it. And tell me a little bit how you guys are leveraging AI in your stack. So in terms of the AI, it's, I was going to say it's fairly simple. It's actually quite complex. So one of the cool things is we're basically getting all of the market data. I mean, since we're aggregating all of the things, we can get all the market data. We can see and understand all the sentiment, et cetera, et cetera.

And also, we're currently training some of the models. We actually onboarded a couple of great data scientist guys recently as well. So we are basically trying to get as much data as many different endpoints to provide like a clear picture, which would be personally, you know, tailored to that particular user who, you know, has some settings put in. So the idea is obviously to provide, you know, personalized recommendations for, you personalized recommendations for portfolio rebalancing and so on and so forth. So this is the end game. In the shorter time span, we already have aggregation of 360 sources of crypto-related news. So it's obviously impossible to go through all of it

by yourself. So that's where the AI comes in. You can literally ask the AI, hey, what's the gist? The last 24 hours, I missed it. Give me the most important things. What's the outcome of this, that elections, for example, and so on. and also with the help of ai we like as i mentioned you know we're trying to make it seamless we're trying to make it user

friendly not just in terms of the uh like ui ux but you know literally making it as um as dumb i would even say um as possible so one of the things that that we tested a couple of months ago was the voice module. So you can literally talk into your phone and ask it, not Siri, but whatever we're going to call it, hey, I want long Bitcoin at this particular price, take profit here, stop loss here, on, I don't know, like Binance, for example, on this particular account that connected. So it would recognize all of those different things. It would put a limit order, and that's it. So even if you're driving, you hear in the news,

like, oh, yeah, BlackRock just bought another trillion. You're like, awesome. So, hey, phone, just do this thing for me, please. That's it. Makes sense. And I do want to thank the team at IBC for putting this panel together. We've had a great panel, and we have about 5,500 concurrent listeners right now. And as we're wrapping up, what would your call to action

and your hook be to these users to try out your product? Honestly, I would say, I mean, guys, we aggregate and everything. We have a couple of, you know, huge announcements to make, you know, some trading campaigns, challenges, you know, private and so on, but, you know, just generally speaking, I think now a lot of us, you know, have a chance of making smart and potential life-changing decisions. So I would say move fast, but don't lose your mind. Embrace crypto and join CDFI family.

Enjoy the markets. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for joining us, CDFI. If you guys are listening in, make sure you give them a follow. Check out their product, especially if moving across multiple chains is something that you do on a daily basis. I know I do personally, and it's one of the biggest time sucks to moving around in the trenches and trying to get different positions created in crypto. So thanks to all the listeners for joining us for another episode of Crypto Town Hall.

And have a wonderful Friday. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. We'll be back on Monday. Take care. Thank you. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll be back on Monday. Take care. Thank you. Thanks everyone.