The Wolf Of All Streets - $250K Bitcoin? Notorious Crypto Bull Is Sure Bitcoin Will Skyrocket

Starting point is 00:00:00 Tim Draper is back at it again, making huge Bitcoin predictions, this time $250,000 by the end of 2024. He said this at Paris Blockchain Week, where I was as well. We've got a lot of news to cover today. Elizabeth Warren back at it again, regulators back at it again with Uniswap. We're going to unpack it all. It's the Friday Five with NLW and myself. Let's go.

Starting point is 00:01:05 What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel, hit the like button and touch that bell so you get Let's go. like everything was exactly the same. The market has done effectively nothing this week. It's a good way to be. Save the watching for when things are going crazy, you know? Yeah. So that was a good time to miss, I guess. But yeah, Bitcoin's still trading at $70,000. I don't really see a reason for people to be panicking, but it seems when I read comments that we have a little bit of those early time-based capitulation situations going on where people get bored and start to get bearish. Yeah. I think it's a... There's also like... I mean, well, we'll get into it. There's a lot of that, I think, happening sort of more broadly. There's a sort of a macro corollary, I think, right now as well. Okay. Well, first I want to talk about the big prediction from Tim Draper, 250,000 Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Tim Draper says, having Bitcoin ETFs will drive demand. I actually hosted the main stage because I hate myself. It was 12 hours of standing in a back room and coming out for five seconds at a time. But Tim Draper was the first person that I announced. He came out on stage, talked about his history, and then did a 10-minute song he had written about Bitcoin reading the lyrics from his phone, which was some cross between rap and performance art. Tim is quite a specimen. Last time I saw him in person, he was actually singing Backstreet Boys karaoke at Satoshi Roundtable in Dubai. But he thinks we're going to $250,000 this year. I don't think so. You know, what's interesting about this,

Starting point is 00:02:31 relative to a Tim Draper prediction, this one is less farther afield relative to where other analysts are than some we've had in the past. It still definitely marks the high end, I think, of estimates. But you've got estimates from some of the major trading firms and banks that see it going up to 150K. Now, obviously, none of those houses are willing to put a firm stamp on that or something. But Tim only being, what is it, 70%, 80% above the top of someone else's estimates is actually pretty reasonable for his standards. I agree. He's been having these predictions year after year after year, but I don't think $250,000 next year would be viewed as unreasonable by most people. So I think it's just a matter of timeline

Starting point is 00:03:16 and really not a matter of price. If you look at how Bitcoin moves cyclically and the percentage gains that you can see. Speaking of Bitcoin, Bitcoin's seen below 20,000 in consumer survey by Deutsche Bank. One third of people they surveyed thought it was going below 20,000, even to zero by the end of the year. So when you ask retail what they think is going to happen, we have quite a few people. I mean, you dig into the chart here. Very few people think it's going up by the end of this year if you're just asking a random person that Deutsche Bank surveyed. This to me means that Tim is more in line with what's likely to happen than not if you have the retail mainstream herd thinking we're going below 20,000. Yeah, I mean, it certainly shows that the persistence of negativity is stronger in the retail sector than it is in, you know, in the institutional sectors, which probably was predictable, in the sense that, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:15 if you dug in, even during the sort of depth of the bear markets, a lot of the institutional players were still gearing up for a future in which Bitcoin and crypto were going to be a part and play a major role. BlackRock didn't just come out of nowhere. They probably never stopped thinking about these things, even if they weren't screaming about it for a few months there. Whereas from a retail perception standpoint, I think a lot of people, there's a set of events that happened in 2022 that just convinced them that the whole thing was a wasteland and that is not going to be peeled back without a lot more evidence. And, you know, listen, we've talked a lot before it happened on what would be the catalyst for getting people to pay

Starting point is 00:04:55 attention again. Would it take, you know, really hitting a new all-time high? Certainly a new all-time high, you know, above 69K brought more attention and more excitement, but I don't think that it's really cracked the nut on the broad-based retail perception. Perhaps it's the audience and the people that were speaking at Paris Blockchain Week versus an all-Bitcoin conference, but I can tell you anecdotally that very few people were talking just about Bitcoin anymore at large conferences. It seems like the audience, the people have really moved on to what's being built in other places, extremely excited about RWA and Deepin and all of these things really seems to be the crux of it.

Starting point is 00:05:40 I think that the community at least is moving on from Bitcoin as well. Not that they don't care about it. I think that it's just solidified such a narrative. There's not that much to talk about. And it seems like people are really coming out of the woodwork and not afraid to go against the Bitcoin only crowd at this point. Yeah, I think that there's a very natural cycle that's tended to occur where it's, you know, sort of Bitcoin leads, something else gets like the other people who are enfranchised excited. And I think one of the things that was a little bit different this time is that Bitcoin got out to a slightly faster lead than it might otherwise have because of the ETF. So that was all sort of,

Starting point is 00:06:19 you know, compressed forward, maybe six months. And so, you know so the timescale between that big sort of pop and the enfranchised community talking about other things has perhaps felt like a little bit more laggy with Bitcoin having a little bit stronger legs than in past cycles because of the ETF. But it's inevitable. There's a huge portion of the crypto industry who are focused on lots and lots of different things. And, you know, it's been a question about what are the things ultimately that are going to get them excited this cycle? Tim Draper obviously pointed as the halving is one of the major catalysts here. Bitcoin miners power up rigs to record levels ahead of halving mining difficulty at record levels. It seems they're trying to squeeze a little bit more juice out of this before the halving hits, which by the way, guys, in true Bitcoin fashion is on 420 probably in eight days from now.

Starting point is 00:07:20 This is happening. It will come and it will go. And then we will have something else to talk about, I'm sure. But a lot of miners, I think, are sweating majorly right now and probably selling quite a bit of Bitcoin to get liquid ahead of this adjustment. Yeah, the mining situation is interesting this time. Miners have had to historically be extremely defensive heading into the halving. And it seemed like that was going to be the situation this time, right? There were a number of miners who had to have Bitcoin above 50,000 to be sort of profitable, for example. I think the lowest cost miners were more like 35, 40 or in that range. Because we're so far above that, I think that it's created a situation where, you know, it's not that miners aren't being defensive, they are still thinking about that. But they're also going on offense a little bit and trying to sort of like get out ahead,

Starting point is 00:08:13 because there's sort of less of a less of a concern around the sort of the you know, whether they can run profitably and more concern around just competition and the incredible amount of hash rate going towards the network right now. Yeah. And from what I've heard, we're going to see a real differentiation between the have and have nots, even among the biggest miners, that some are going to be extremely well positioned and some really are going to feel the heat if we see any sort of drawdown in price, which we do tend to see. I have a theory where some of those stronger miners may actually sell some Bitcoin, keep price depressed a bit and take the competition out. But I guess we to see. I have a theory where some of those stronger miners may actually sell some Bitcoin, keep price depressed a bit and take the competition out. But I guess we'll see what

Starting point is 00:08:50 happens there. But we've had mining experts on who have said there are some who are profitable, you know, all the way up to, you know, down to 25,000 and some who will need it to be trading at 80 or 90 this summer really to survive. So I guess we'll see. The biggest, I think, story of this week is the next one. DeFi exchange creator Uniswap Labs has SEC sent it lawsuit warning. Ye olde Wells notice heading back to people in the crypto industry. Of course, Hayden Adams from Uniswap

Starting point is 00:09:21 wrote a very long post that got incredible engagement because he said, I'm not surprised, just annoyed, disappointed, ready to fight. I think what's interesting here is that knowing the regulatory environment, Uniswap decided to build, stay, based in New York, of all places, the most aggressive state in one of the most aggressive countries for regulation, obviously believing that what they were doing was regulatory compliant and no threat. But here it comes. This is the biggest attack likely on DeFi, assuming the SEC follows through on this Wells notice, which is effectively telling you in advance that they're recommending an enforcement action. Yeah. I mean, listen, the choice to build in New York suggests to me not only a conviction around the

Starting point is 00:10:09 legality of what you're doing, but also it's courting the fight. This has been telegraphed by the SEC for years now. I think the only thing that's surprising is that it's taken them this long to take some dramatic action. They've used phrases like so-called decentralized finance for going on three years at this point. This was always coming. And listen, I think it's good that the crypto industry is geared up to fight these fights. We were never, ever getting out of DeFi without this fight happening in courts, even probably if there had been comprehensive legislation or something that tried to take this on. There's still so many nuances that are going to be figured out.

Starting point is 00:10:48 We don't know yet the nature of the complaint, and I think that'll shape a lot of what will happen here. Are they going to focus on Uniswap maintaining a front end? Because that's very different than some of the other things that they could choose. So I think that the next shoe to drop is actually the most important one when it comes to understanding what the nature of the fight that DeFi has to have is. But this is always going to be a fight at some point or another, and at least the war's here now. Have you seen any predictions or information as to what that may be? I wouldn't be surprised if this simply ended up being your listing and selling unregistered securities

Starting point is 00:11:28 follow-up to what we've seen with Coinbase and Binance, but I guess it could go much deeper than that. Yeah, I haven't seen... It feels to me like right now people are doing less predicting exactly what it's about and just articulating all the different things that it could be about. It's sort of all the things that people have wondered about with DeFi in the past.

Starting point is 00:11:53 Interestingly, I think that everyone in the industry loves you to swap. So you had some people who maybe are critical of Coinbase and cheer for the SEC Bitcoiners. There's certainly people who are extremely critical of Ripple and would have liked to see them lose. I don't think there's anyone in this industry that wouldn't back a fight against the SEC on behalf of Uniswap and DeFi specifically. I think it's also important to note, as Hayden said, the fight will take years, may go all the way to the Supreme Court, and the future of financial technology in our industry hangs in the balance. If we stand together, we can win. I'm very curious to see what happens, how fast this hits. We know how fast it will take, but if this drops ahead of the election and what would happen if we see regime change or change at the SEC, because this seems like a very Gary Gensler thing to do. And if there's no Gary Gensler, the thirst for this fight may not be there in the SEC in the future. Yeah, I think a number of people commented like, you know, they're picking fights with extraordinarily dedicated and well-capitalized teams, which is, you know, something of a question from a strategic standpoint.

Starting point is 00:12:58 I agree that I think that if there is a shift, that could definitely diminish the appetite for this fight. But I think that one of the things that we need to keep in mind is depressing the industry, creating uncertainty, sowing discord and questions, and getting people to think twice before they start projects in the US, I think is part of the intention. You know, sure, they would like big crashing legal victories, which shut things down and which affirm their way of looking at things. But I don't think they mind when it's just they're slowing things down. You know, I think that they view that as a partial victory. And so you see, you know, a lot of folks have been recommending that if you're going to

Starting point is 00:13:42 build anything in DeFi, you get out of the United States. It's not that it's bad advice, but I think it's exactly the advice that people like Gary Gensler are excited to see. They don't want to deal with this. The idea that if it's here, we get to regulate it better. They don't want this on their plate at all. I think you're absolutely right. And now that I think about it a bit more, I think that's exactly what this is about. Because the sentiment when the SEC came after Coinbase and Binance over a year ago, almost

Starting point is 00:14:10 now, was everybody in the United States is leaving. Every hedge fund's leaving. Every project is leaving. That changed. And I'm sure the SEC saw that there was a lack of fear of the SEC over the past few months. People were coming back to the United States, starting to say that this was a good place to build. Going after DeFi in the US makes it very, very clear that they're still not welcome. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:14:34 Yeah, I think you're absolutely correct. So the next story we have, Republican Senator Tillis calls for light crypto regulatory framework ahead of presidential election. This is really a story of a two parties or two perceptions of how to approach. We still obviously don't have regulatory clarity. We don't have laws on the books, but the Republicans clearly are starting to say we need a regulatory framework, but it needs to make sense and keep the industry on shore. Then you have, obviously, as you scroll down, a whole lot of comments by Elizabeth Warren saying the opposite. So it's kind of jawboning. And I think we're back to the same old fight. But this did bring Elizabeth back out of the woodwork. Name your bad guy and

Starting point is 00:15:19 crypto is the way they can move money around, she said here. And I don't think we're getting anything clear before this election, but I think it does telegraph what we might see after the election. Yeah. She's trying out some new FUD this time around with the idea of Iran making money from hosting validator nodes. That was her big addition. I think you're right. I mean, listen, there are two very different conceptions of this. Unfortunately, they are increasingly catalyzed around party lines, not exclusively still. Bitcoin and crypto have managed to maintain some amount of bipartisanship, which is impressive relative to the US political system.

Starting point is 00:15:59 But unfortunately, by and large, that's not the case. And it seems increasingly unlikely that we're even going to get over the line with stable coin legislation before the elections, which is it's such an obvious area. I mean, for months now, all that's been in the way, it seems, is the question of states versus federal when it comes to who has ultimate authority over stablecoin regulation. And there are, I think, fairly obvious compromises to be had there that many parties on all this on other sides on each side have talked about, and they're still not doing it, you know, which says to me that this is, you know, largely caught up in a political game. And the Elizabeth Warrens of the world have decided that it's a winning political issue for

Starting point is 00:16:43 them, and maybe they're right. But that's a political battle now. I think that that reflects why perhaps we paid attention less to this hearing than basically any other hearing we've had. I think that this one barely registered a notice from most people in the crypto industry, because it's just the same old, same old at this point. Yeah, it is the same old, same old. And I think it shines a bright light on the difference in approaches, both legislatively and regulatorily from different jurisdictions all over the world. I can point to this right now. Hong Kong, which I know is slightly different this week. Right. And we're still having the same conversations in the United States. I had actually two really interesting conversations, two fireside chats in Paris that I hosted.

Starting point is 00:17:37 One was with Jan Van Eck, which was the first day of the conference. I sat down with him and he said, listen, the United States regulatory environment is a disaster. Ethereum spot ETFs are very unlikely. We don't have any clarity. We don't have a friendly regulator. It took a lawsuit to get a Bitcoin spot ETF approved. The next day, I was asked last minute to sit down with Verena Ross, who is effectively the Gary Gensler of European regulation. She's the chair of ESMA. It seemed like I would be the last person they would want to sit down with a regulator and have a conversation. But interestingly, VanEck had said, listen, the regulatory environment in Europe, we're sitting here in Paris. That's why

Starting point is 00:18:14 we're here. It's great. It's friendly. And then I said to her, Jan VanEck said the United States is lagging. Europe is very friendly. And she was very quick to say, I would not call the regulatory environment here friendly. She's a massive critic. She's ahead. Europe is slightly ahead. But it's very clear that we're now seeing the United States behind, Europe somewhere in the middle, but still very slow. And then an absolute boon in regulatory arbitrage in the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and other jurisdictions all over the world. Yep.

Starting point is 00:18:46 And so I think that to your point before, there's just no reason to attempt to even do any of this in the United States right now. Yeah. I mean, it's just it is it is what it is. You know, I just thought it was very funny that VanEck said they were friendly and she was the person he said was friendly. And she then said, we're not friendly. Crypto traders. Hundred and ten million hall was not a theft lawyer says mango markets is back of course this is obby eisenberg going to trial here is there anything left to unpack in this story that we didn't see before i mean i think that it there are, this is another consequential story for DeFi in terms of the implications for, you know, how debt is handled on these platforms and how smart contracts interact with the law. I mean, it's really a live fire test of some of the principles here. Now, it may end up amounting to nothing because, you know, what they sort of decide is that he just sort of, you know, he did sort of a new variety of

Starting point is 00:19:51 old garden variety crimes. But there could be a number of ways in which I think it becomes a little bit more consequential for what you can and can't do. I think to me, it's just more a part of the larger reconciliation that we were just talking about that, you know, again, DeFi was always going to have to go through. There was no universe in which DeFi was going to get to just like exist in its little orbit and be this, you know, financial playground that was totally walled off. The fact that it got to do that for about four years is insane. And I think reflective of just how insanely high the barriers to entry were that it was mostly just, you know, enfranchised people who knew what they were doing that were,

Starting point is 00:20:28 you know, playing around in there, but that's no longer that time. And, uh, and you know, it's just a thing that we got to go through. Yeah. Just interesting. The defense that he made from the beginning and that his lawyers made, if people remember when this happened, he openly came out and said, yeah, I did this. It's totally fine. Yep. Exactly. So it's in the code, he openly came out and said, yeah, I did this. It's totally fine. Yep, exactly. It's in the code, right? If I'm just using something that's publicly available to everyone to make money in this market, why am I wrong? It feels like he's going to be the Ross Ulbricht or the Charlie Shrem of this cycle who takes the first major shot probably on behalf of DeFi. Yeah. It's going to be interesting. I have no sense right now based on what's transpired so far, how to think about

Starting point is 00:21:14 what's likely to come. But I don't think this case will last too long. So I'm sure by next week, we'll have even more to talk about. Yeah, I think so. And the final story that we have here, totally over my head, Monad Labs raises $225 million in funding round led by Paradigm, layer one blockchain developer. Monad Labs finalizes a $225 deal. Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, Green Oaks also participated in the round, among others. I think this is getting a lot of news because A, it's a huge number, 225 million. And because this is yet another layer one, EVM compatible, it kind of just sounds like Optus and Optimism and Arbitrum and all of these. Is there any nuance here?

Starting point is 00:21:58 Do we need another layer one chain? And why is there so much money behind this one specifically well i think that there there is a uh a a technical approach difference right so if you look at past layer ones the way that they advertise themselves tends to be mostly just focused on you know whatever like the superlatives like faster better cheaper you know but there's not necessarily like uh some massive sort of shift in how they approach things. I think Monad is taking a different approach to parallelization that is exciting to some of these investors. But let's hold aside that because that's not the interesting part of the story to

Starting point is 00:22:37 me. The interesting part of the story to me is that historically speaking, there's always some new layer one that gets people excited in cycles. And I actually think that Aptos and SWE have been fairly behind the previous eight ball with that in terms of just what I would have expected. The reason that there will always be a new layer one is one, uncynically, you could say it's because there's always new technology advances. The more cynical version is that layer ones are an absolute boondoggle for venture capitalists, and they're always going to be able to make money from them. So there's always an incentive to bet on some new layer one, even if you're heavily invested in the old layer ones, too. But going back to the sort of the more meta contextual point of this cycle,

Starting point is 00:23:22 I think that Solana's resurgence actually stole a lot of the thunder from what Aptos and Sui might have otherwise been able to capture from an attention standpoint. Usually there's sort of some influx of people to whatever that hot new layer one was, but it was almost like Solana got reborn this cycle. Its price dynamics were reborn. There were people who were sort of coming out of the woodwork to build on it. And so it's been a little bit more fragmented and dissipated. The Monad energy that I've seen over the last week looks to me more like the type of layer one excitement we got last cycle when, for example, Solana was first launched, where

Starting point is 00:23:59 there's a huge number of different venture firms all piling in, all talking about the same thing, all saying, hey, look at how good their go-to-market strategy is. Although I thought one of the best comments that I read about it was Jill Gunter, who said something to the effect of, I keep reading from venture capitalists that Monad's go-to-market strategy is amazing and perfectly executed, but it seems to me that their go-to-market strategy is just venture capitalists saying that their go-to-market strategy is really good. And I think that that's actually reflective of where it's fitting in the cycle. And again, there's no hate on them. It could be a true innovation that's really important. But to me, the interesting thing about it is more what it reflects

Starting point is 00:24:38 of the cycle. It's almost like we are catching up now to things that I would have expected to see a couple months ago as Bitcoin started to take off. We're finally kind of like, you know, aligning into this piece of the cycle where, you know, the crypto folks get excited about crypto-y things. I just find it hilarious that at the depths of the bear market, we had so many people saying it'll be different next time if we get another cycle. People have learned from all the FOMO and insanity, and we're not even to the having yet. And we have historic volume in the meme coin casino. We have 220 something million dollar raises for new layer ones. We have all the big venture capitals raising huge funds again. It just proves that humans are going to human and

Starting point is 00:25:24 nothing is going to human and nothing is going to ever change when there's so many opportunities to effectively make free money in this space for VCs and the others that get early access. Yep, absolutely. All right. Well, that's all we got for today. Glad to be back. Everybody follow the breakdown. NLW, we will definitely be back next week once again are you going to dubai i'm now i i i fomoed into dubai while i was in paris i was refusing to go uh and then i got enough bullying and 24 hours had instant regret and almost canceled it because i just knew it would mean i was going to sit at dinner with 30 dudes every single night listening to conversations

Starting point is 00:26:03 about their projects i'm not going but i can can't wait to hear about all 30 of those projects when you come back. Well, it will be my last day and I will literally be leaving Token 2049 to do our stream because it'll be late in the afternoon. So I'm sure I'll have a lot of hot takes to share. All right, guys, that's all we got for you today. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Bye. Let's go.

The Wolf Of All Streets - $250K Bitcoin? Notorious Crypto Bull Is Sure Bitcoin Will Skyrocket

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