The Wolf Of All Streets - $258M ETF Inflows. Fear at 11. Bottom In? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

In this Crypto Town Hall episode, host Scott discusses Bitcoin's consolidation around $66K amid extreme fear signals, potential bottoming processes, and macro uncertainty from geopolitical tensions and tariffs. The panel debates Vitalik's ETH sales, Ethereum Foundation austerity, Meta's stablecoin comeback plans, Kraken's 24/7 tokenized stock perps, and the rise of financial nihilism via prediction markets potentially reducing altcoin speculation. Guests explore whether stablecoins extend U.S. dollar dominance (kicking the fiat can down the road) or accelerate global currency erosion, while affirming Bitcoin's long-term store-of-value narrative despite current bearish sentiment and lack of clear catalysts.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall every other day here on X 1015 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. If you hadn't noticed, we were not here yesterday. We are trying to maximize the content of the show by making it a little less frequent and also obviously free up some time for the posts, especially as there's less news to talk about. So we will be back likely on Friday after today. But there's a lot of news to go through today. and we can discuss which items we want to dig into. First, I think some of the biggest stories here,

a lot of people agree that Vatolic has sold $8.6 million in ETH this week. Strategy is the number one shorted stock globally, which came out pretty crazy. The ETH Foundation has begun staking the ETH Treasury, finally. Trump has no SBF pardon plans. I think we already knew that. Tethers teasing a new payments card. Meta, planning a stable.

coin comeback in the second part of 2026, which is kind of wild when you remember the entire DM Libra debacle where they actually tried to be ahead of this in the last administration and got completely slapped down. Cracken rolling out 24-7, 365 perpetual trading on tokenized stocks. So we've brought our complete degeneracy now to the stock market. And of course, Coinbase rolling out stock trading to all U.S. users 24-5. rather than 24-7. And I guess it should be noted that there was this little State of the Union thing yesterday, a potential war in Iran, and a lot of other things going on outside of the crypto market.

So first, I mean, I guess to set the table where we stand in the cycle or in the market, obviously we've had a bit of a bounce here, trading at 66,800 for Bitcoin. It went down to the 62s, I believe, yesterday. We had a bottom a few weeks ago that was down just below 60. Whatever we consolidate like this, we get a whole lot of debate as to whether the bottom is in. I can tell you a few signals from my perspective that make a bottom possible. Can't say guaranteed, likely. I also think bottoming is a process, so 55, 60, 59, 64, whatever.

All the same in my mind. But we had crypto fear and greed at five. two days ago, I think it's at 11 today, the lowest it has ever been at 5. And this is the longest streak of having fear in the crypto market, which is just wild to me when we're trading at $65,000. But I think a lot of that has to do with obviously altcoins outside of Bitcoin. We have micro strategy as the most shorted stock on the planet. I mean, there's just a lot of bottom signals. We can get a weekly RSI on the Bitcoin chart when it went to 62 yesterday without closing there, but it touched the all-time low on RSI on the weekly chart for Bitcoin.

Just a hell of a lot of reasons. Of course, we have Bitcoin going to zero. Google searches and all-time high, a lot of them. So I would love anyone jump in, tell me your perspective on where we stand in the market right now. Then we can sort of dig into some of these news stories. I'm counting on you guys. Bro, no takers at all. I thought the funniest thing was meta.

That was the thing that just made me laugh. in that it was so early, so directionally right. But just the timing was not right with regulations and everything. I just, you know, it's like, I think I put out a tweet. It's like so early yet so late. It's just, it's kind of a bummer for Mark because I think that would have been if he was, I mean, you guys, if you guys were around, some of you might be too young to remember, but it was like they got everybody on board that thing.

everybody from Visa to the banks, like everybody signed up for that thing. And then like a week later, it was over. And it was like, what, what happened? Congress happened. Do you remember that? Of course I remember it. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that flip-flop was so epic, where everybody was in and then a week later, or whatever, two weeks later, everybody was out. Anyway, that was just a funny thing. I just, I mean, I think Zuck is just incredible, just as an operator and a vision. And that guy knew what was coming, but just timing is everything. Yeah, they, you know, that was obviously also when there was a lot of, well, it was justified, obviously, but, you know, election interference and Facebook FUD was at a maximum.

And the government saw Facebook trying to basically create a dollar competitor from a private tech company and just freaked out. Of course, now we have that, but just not from the big tech companies, from companies that are, you know, just stable coin companies. I mean, and we've lost to a large degree that conversation about like a network state. And I think, you know, with Elon maybe finally getting his payment infrastructure set, we can begin having those discussions again. I mean, it's completely dropped off the conversation. But, you know, a network state, you know, idea, you know, I think, you know, telegram still has a really good opportunity at it as well, but Elon's probably got the best opportunity. We could have that discussion down the road a little bit, but something to keep your eye on.

Lou, you were jumping in. Yeah, I actually think the Facebook news is really big news. I went on CNBC the day that Lieber was announced, and I said it was DOA at the time. It was obvious, and my assumption was, I mean, Mark and his team, they're brilliant people. They knew it was DOA. So I think they just did it as a diversion. And, you know, not quite sure to accomplish what. But I think that Facebook obviously has the opportunity to be the thing that brings crypto to the masses.

Yeah, I think this is good news now, regardless, just really interesting, sort of, as Adam alluded to, how early they were and how long now it's been since then. Matt, go ahead. And just a quick take here. As anybody heard from Dave Marcus at all, I haven't seen any commentary from him regarding this. I wonder if he's kind of feeling like, I told you. you so or how is he even feeling about this yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna have to hit him up and have that conversation i've had him on before he's brilliant but uh obviously he was sort of the architect of libra as he pointed on i guess it was dm i can't even remember now if it was a dm first and then

libra first and leber first liber then dm yeah and the aptos guys i think mo sheik and avery all those guys were also you know early on the libra project so and david marcus of course now light sparked, a lot of very viable projects and great thinkers came out at that Libre project. So at least we have that. I mean, circling back BCS, I saw you had your hand up. I know you probably wanted to talk about the market more than the Facebook news. So just a, let's circle back to that. Yeah, just a quick one to let the smarter guys on that front's feet. But from more of a technical level, I think it's quite mixed at the moment. You know, you're seeing a lot of kind of open interest getting gobbled up on Bitcoin. You know, if you look at the

last few weeks is trying hard to kind of drive lower in a kind of uncertain geopolitical landscape as well. If you look at the equity markets, obviously focus on things like the index ES NASDAQ, for example. You can see they've basically been moving sideways for a little while. So the kind of risk appetite is a little bit kind of shocked more than kind of off, I would say, if you look at legacy markets, right? We know that Bitcoin has aligned itself very heavily with equity markets of recent times. I think one of the really interesting things that we're looking over here is, you know, looking at that kind of risk bid and how it was so heavily towards AI is how it's becoming a lot more selective now. If you look at the kind of major systemic shocks we had to the

system, we had it regarding, you know, the application of AI towards legal entities, and we saw those kind of major legal companies kind of pulled back. We've seen it with software as well, you know, looking at this as companies that are getting hit at the moment are the ones that are being seen that AI is massive threat for. So therefore, the kind of, I want to say diversification, but they kind of pivot a little bit is kind of moving in to that, you know, that quality bid. Okay, what does AI empower more than it threatens? Okay. And I think the market is kind of leveling off with that. Obviously, you've got other catalysts coming in with the tariff situation and that as well.

I just, you know, it's really easy to forget sometimes, I think, that crypto is a massive beat. to risk asset is just swimming head on into this wall. But, you know, if you really, really zoom out here, we're coming back in towards the kind of 200 period, you know, SMI, you've got a lot of absorption starting to happen down here at the lows. I'm not saying that this is the bottom, right? For me personally, you know, and for what we're doing here, we're looking for a little bit more of an injection back into risk assets,

especially from kind of a legacy side. But actually, I think this could be getting hit a lot harder here. We're seeing a lot of absorption for the lows. So I think, you know, maybe when we see the traditional markets, I settled a little bit more. It seems like we're a relatively good base back at that, you know, consolidation on Bitcoin that we made back in, started around March 2024. Love that.

Anybody else takes specifically where we're at with the market right now? No takers. Basically, I'm going to generally kind of agree with your take. But I personally, like if I had gunned to my head, I would lean towards very close to a bottom here, personally, just because of all those other kind of bottom signals that I was talking about before. That doesn't mean, though, that I expect a massive rally up, right? I mean, we could stay here for six months in this general area, which I think is a lot of people's base case. I mean, Gary, that's kind of how you're looking at it, right? I mean, even if we go lower,

that there's, it's going to be a while. Yeah, I think so, man. I mean, I just don't see what's going to drive this, right? I was hoping that we would get a heavy, heavy flush out. But we just need, we need something to happen here. And there's just, I don't see what's going to be positive to really push this thing in the short term. Yeah, what's the narrative? I mean, I see. David Bailey tweeting about, you know, oh, Bitcoin's the base layer for AI. It's like, bro, come on, man.

And it's just like, yeah, it's like that kid. He should really just be quiet. Because, I mean, I don't know what his poster attempting to do other than then keep him in the relevance factor. it's really pretty embarrassing. Hey, AI on Bitcoin is a thing, guys. Yeah, but it doesn't mean it's going to be the base player of all AI. It's a bad thing. I mean, come on, man.

Like, do we believe the AI want slow, expensive transactions? I mean, it's just not going to happen. I mean, we can have the debate whether it's going to be, you know, stable coins or some other crypto. But to think it's going to be Bitcoin and Lightning Network, bro, come on, man. I mean, not happening. Yeah, I'm not saying it is or it isn't. I'm just saying, you know, there was a time when the experts thought that there were going to be 10 home computers. So I think none of us know shit.

Yeah, I think that I think everybody here has consensus that, and maybe we can be wrong, by the way, but that AI agents and AI, the base currency level will be some sort of blockchain-based technology, right? but I don't see how AI, Bitcoin, as the base layer of AI makes much sense. I mean, they could come up with their own currency. Of course. Who knows, man. Trading with meme coins by themselves. Yeah, exactly. Who knows?

But to think that it's going to be Bitcoin, it's just, it's just such a, it's so weak, a narrative and really just, I mean, give me the best, how could it possibly work on Bitcoin? I mean, anybody? Is he saying that it'll be the base technological level, level, layer? excuse me, or that they're going to transact in Bitcoin. By the way, I think both of those are nonsense. Yeah, it's going to be the, yeah, both are nonsense. But I guess at the core, you could say, oh, well, it's going to be the base value layer.

But, I mean, bro, just that conversation is so weak and doesn't really have anything to do with what's happening in the AI agent space right now at all. Yeah, it's just, it's such a terrible narrative. And I see some Bitcoiners leaning into it. Oh, I got my fucking Noster hooked up. I mean, do it. Do it. Have you ever looked at the metrics on Noster, by the way? They're probably available to have it on their own site. Like, it's a graveyard. Is it eight dudes or ten dudes? No, I mean, it's like that, but more, and I haven't looked in a while, to be fair, so I'm quoting past knowledge.

Because, you know, I looked at it and I was like, maybe I'll use this. But the rate of retention of users is like astoundingly awful. You know, people, and I think we've all probably experienced it, but you try it once you do it for a week, you do it for a month, and then you just lose interest, and you fall off. and like every metric shows that. There's just, yeah, conceptually, it's a great idea. Decentralized social just didn't work, right? People threw a lot of money at it.

I mean, I'm all for it. Like, I like the idea, right? It hasn't worked. It hasn't worked. We haven't found the thing. It will be a thing. We all know it'll be a thing. I agree with that.

Well, we definitely don't. We definitely don't know it's going to be a thing. I mean, you believe it will. I kind of do too. But maybe it's the type of thing. thing where it's only a thing if your society is so terrible that you need that. I will say, though, Adam, I mean, maybe AI strengthens the case. I'm not, by the way, this is just totally for conversation, but AI strengthens the case

because I think we all know that X and meta and everything is going to be intolerable AI slop run by non-humans entirely. But you get that same slop on Nosterman. Yeah, I mean, it's just there's so even whatever you. find you have to have a wallet spun up to prove proof of identity. But I mean, we all know that that can be gamed. I just don't, I don't actually see a way to not game systems. Like humans just do that. And to think that the AI aren't going to do that is is kind of wishful thinking. But I don't think. I mean, it's already, go ahead. I was just going to say, I don't think we need

perfection, right? It's what we do know is the current system is so bad, so horrible for humanity that, pretty sure we can come up with a better one. Well, I might push back and say it's not bad for humanity, but yeah, you know, I mean, we're in the crypto space. So we accept that everything's 97% broken and push the ball 3%. It just might not be one of those ideas that works, not at this time. I mean, it just doesn't. It doesn't work.

Like obviously, Farcaster basically not shut down, but, you know, moved on. That was the best effort, the biggest effort. and they basically turned into a wallet. Right. And hedge.com did work. Right? Until they got their timing right. Nothing.

The bottom line is almost nothing is works yet. Right. But we're at the beginning of building these tools to make them work. Busy. So I just, keen to kind of get your guys' thoughts on this, really. As you know, I kind of look at the markets a lot more from a kind of legacy,

but still more of a kind of technical level as well. I mean, do you guys think that probably for not the first time, but there's more of a kind of case that people are kind of questioning the, the amount of time Bitcoin's been around now. It's not this new, shiny, super exciting asset that people are looking to rush into that are seeing this kind of future adoption, that a lot more people, you know, in traditional circles, especially kind of questioning its use case a little bit and its mass adoption. I know this is definitely out of my wheelhouse, but a lot of conversations that I'm getting with people I'm speaking to at the moment are talking

about things as far looking as the threat of quantum computing and stuff like that. Now, look, the market conditions simply don't support the risk bid for things like crypto at the moment, and it has been that way for a little while in my experience anyway. So I think Bitcoin and crypto is fighting against a pretty strong current anyway. But I've been seeing a lot more of this coming out in research papers now, people kind of like looking at the use case for Bitcoin, people looking at the length of time has been around, people looking at disruption coming in from AI, looking towards the future with quantum computing and kind of, you know, that maybe the return to risk element is becoming a big problem for it.

Sure. Anybody else, feel free to jump in. If not, we can move on to other topics. Yeah. I would say, listen, I think we have some actually very interesting topics here, though, that we can discuss. And I think one of them, obviously, that's the most interesting to me is the Cracken news. The Cracken is going to 24-7, 365 trading of tokenized stocks. with perps.

Like, this is crazy, right? So it's not only is it that 24-7-365 tradable stocks, by the way, I will just say nothing against Cracken, I think it's amazing they're doing this, but, like, if you're going to trade, like, Tesla perps in off-market hours, okay, good luck. But either way, like, the fact you'll be able to now, we're bringing 24-7-365 to trading stocks. Those stocks are using blockchain rails and our tokenized.

and we're bringing the BitBex created perps to legacy markets. So three-headed monster there. Good, bad. What does this mean? What pressure does this put on sort of legacy exchanges? This is obviously at the same time that we got an announcement of stocks being traded on Coinbase 24-5, so not on weekends. I would love your guys' takes.

Robert, you got to be paying attention to this as a legacy market guy. Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty dumb. If that's what the market wants, I guess, like it's good. But it kind of just goes to like the financial nihilism thing. We were talking about that yesterday with Kalshi and the surge and kind of prediction markets and all that. Like I understand the argument that the tech kind of e acceleration bros, you know, try to make for all that. But I don't know. It's hard to see how it's not just like complete.

degeneracy. I mean, I, you know, if I could go long on on financial nihilism and, and, you know, gambling and kind of degeneracy in that way, I would. But yeah, it's just, it's kind of sad. And I think it's a reflection of, you know, where the average young man is, too, because, you know, who, who's going to be trading that? It's not going to be, you know, your average boomer. No. Yeah, that's my point about just getting wrecked. I mean, can you Imagine the volatility and it's not actually tracked by the actual price of the stock elsewhere. And what happens when there's a reset on Monday when the real volume and actual traders come back on Sunday night and hours?

It's, I love, like I said, I love that they're doing it because, you know, it's obviously giving access to people who don't necessarily have it to these products. But, you know, just be very, very, very, very careful, I would say if you're going to actually be trading these things. Perps are wild. I had Ian Weisberger, Dave's son actually, on my show this morning. You may run coin routes. They basically are running derivatives and perps and very deep on what you can and can't do.

And he actually told me that Cracken's still going to have to have T plus one settlement for these. They're not going to auto-liquidate like normal perps because that's not legal in the United States. So you're still going to have T-plus-1 margin calls on 24-7, 365 tokenized stock perps. So it's going to be very difficult from a mechanic. perspective to get this right, initially at least. It's pretty wild. I pinned an article, Robert, that I wrote above like months ago, and actually something I've been talking about probably for seven or eight months, people looked at me as crazy. But to the financial nihilism point you're making, I think that the death of the Alcoigne market has largely happened because of the rise of

prediction markets, certainly silver and such as well. But I think that you gambling on everything 24-7, 365, if we're being intellectually honest, eliminated the need for 99% of the volume on all coins that people were just speculating on because they wanted to gamble 24-7-365 and didn't have access to it, add in the hotball of money and medals to that. And the fact, to your most important point, is that when people start to speculate and gamble on everything, it's usually more of a signal of distrust in the system or despair at, you know, inflation and what's happening in their lives than anything else. I mean, Weimar Republic. like who was the height of gambling because people, you know, had to carry their cash to wheelbarrow.

One. And what's it mean for Bitcoin, too? You know, it, the value proposition for Bitcoin, you know, it does that kind of vanish, you know, if you're a young zoomer, you know, young kid working two, two jobs, paycheck to paycheck, you know, and you have, I don't know, $200 a month that you can speculate or save, you know, putting it into Bitcoin, where it might two or three X, you know, versus putting that 200 into some parlay where you can 20x in an afternoon. I think that, you know, we got to have a serious conversation about now, look, smart money might utilize Bitcoin for the kind of store value prospect. But, you know, how much new retail money is going to come into Bitcoin, which is kind of, you know, where I focus, I don't see how prediction markets haven't. dramatically reduce the bid for Bitcoin from the kind of younger, you know, young men retail kind of

corner. Yeah, I wonder, I guess the natural question there is, were they ever the buyer anyways, right? Or are they needed in this market? Because I think, you know, to some degree, I think those, I think they were the buyer in 2016 and 17 before ICOs. I think they all, and because you have to remember that back then Bitcoin, you know, was the currency for trading. There were no stable coin pairs. So anybody who was here in 1617, you bought Bitcoin, you moved it to, you know, BitTrex and then later Binance, whatever exchange, Polonics you were on. And you had to trade from Bitcoin to all coins, right? So like I think those people, even the speculators, had to touch Bitcoin back then. Once stablecoin became a unit of account for trading and speculating,

you didn't need Bitcoin to be that. So I would argue that back then Bitcoin started to become an asset that was more familiar to like an investor than a speculator already. But I could be wrong, right? And so I think that, you know, the case for Bitcoin is institutional money and people with actual portfolios that want to allocate a certain percentage and less the people trying to get ahead of their hyperinflating currency. But, you know, I think it's a worthy conversation. Well, I mean, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, I just real quick, I think, you know, there is the potential. for that to emerge. You know, if we really get kind of the degree of inflation that I think is... This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com. Visit to download your spaces today. Coming, should we get this kind of AI deflationary shock? The amount of stimulus and money printing is going to be insane. Backstop private credit, backstop, you know, the U.S. Treasury market,

which is going to be probably at least 15% of GDP, the deficit. the deficit in a truly kind of deflationary, you know, economic contraction. You're talking about at least a 15% of GDP deficit, so probably closer to 20. You know, the Fed will be backstopping that. They'll be back stopping that. They'll be back stopping private credit. There will be UBI or some kind of jobs program. Like the amount of money printing in that world, if AI works, the amount of deflation and therefore kind of the second order effect, stimulus to count.

counteract and deal with the kind of deflation. You know, you could see Bitcoin emerge then, you know, but we just might be a couple years early in that case. Somebody was jumping in. Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, I think your point on on kind of the use, you know, when we saw use of the cryptos, you know, when we saw in the 21 bull, you know, you had to have to buy NFTs, right? And obviously during the meme coin cycle, you had to have soul, you know, to buy meme coins. We just, there's so many things against crypto right now.

We just don't have anything like that right now. There's people just aren't really using it. There's no real need to use it, right? When you're on Polymark, even if you're on Polymarket or whatever, you're not really, you know, there's no native, you're not using crypto. You're using a stable coin.

So I just, yeah, there's a reason why we're at this sphere index, right? We don't see it. But I do believe, I mean, I'm, you know, obviously big in the AI space. And I do believe this is kind of the narrative that will kind of bring crypto back. It does feel like that to me. But it doesn't, that narrative isn't going to catch on Bitcoin.

So Bitcoin either has to become money again, which seems unlikely given, you know, the current state of Bitcoin maxis. Or it's got to be a store of value. And it certainly hasn't shown that in the current market. So I'm kind of with Gary where this just might take a year or more to kind of hash out. Mati. Yeah, thanks. Great to see some of my favorite people on the internet here.

Literally, I couldn't disagree more with what most of the panel is saying, and they certainly couldn't disagree more with what the market is doing right now. We're in a unique paradigm shift or regime shift moment as far as markets are concerned with gold skyrocketing while the dollar is weakening and the stock index is just kind of holding steady this is not normal market behavior and it's certainly foretelling of more than even just a flight to safety much more extreme minimization of risk and it's interesting to see it happening during a time of tokenization. You know, Cracken doing their tokenized stocks is fascinating.

And the NASDAQ as well as Robin Hood, all kind of tokenizing stocks. The reason for this, of course, is because it's more competitive, which obviously, you know, brokers have enjoyed a position of what happens if markets move over the weekend. They could basically set prices on the open. and that's very good for market makers. And they're giving up that advantage, not lightly, but because they have to remain competitive against cryptocurrencies and blockchain settled transactions.

Why are the markets behaving like this? So in my mind, there's a lot of uncertainty. In fact, unprecedented uncertainty. We saw the global world index of governments using the word uncertainty, in their reports, shooting to an all-time high, five times that of the great financial crisis. Google trends for the word uncertainty. I've also spiked way above normal at unprecedented levels, as well as stock analysts

and corporate leaders using the word uncertainty more than ever. And very likely that it has to do with ongoing geopolitical tensions, trade wars. some people must be at least some people must be trying to price in world war three at this point along with aliens and the Epstein files which just basically go to show that people don't trust their leaders fed credibility has been seriously undermined by Jerome Powell who came out against the president and basically accused him of politicking against the federal reserve and the federal reserves credibility hinges on its independence of politics. And so by making it a political organization and dragging it into politics, they undermine the credibility.

All the while, the government debt, not just in the United States, but across the entire planet, is skyrocketing. Governments are notoriously bad with money. They're good at kicking the can down the road, but eventually you've got to get to the end of the road. And so I don't think Ray Dalio is very far off when he said that we could be looking at a total collapse of all fiat currencies. I'm not trying to raise any alarm bells, but for the people questioning what is Bitcoin's narrative, I mean, Bitcoin's narrative hasn't changed. It's been the same since Satoshi wrote the white paper. It is the alternative to fiat debt-based government-issued currencies. And I believe that the market is getting it completely wrong over here and creating a generational opportunity for those who are interested, especially now that Wall Street has all of their structured products and bridges built right into Bitcoin's heart.

With that, I will drop the mic. Lou? Well, I will second everything that Mati said. People talk about the narrative. What gives me my Uber bullishness on it is all Bitcoin has to do is exactly. exactly what it's done every day for the last 15, 16 years. This is what it's done. This is what it will continue to do.

And as Mati just made a good case for, there is a global need from every person on the planet. Even if they only make $200 a week or whatever it is, their life would be better if they put $5 a week into Bitcoin starting today. And I don't think Bitcoin has to come up. What is going to make it turn around? You know, I don't think anybody knows that, but I feel with complete certainty, more people are still every day joining the community.

That doesn't mean the price goes up every day, week, month, or year. But what it means damn well means is every 10 years, it goes a bunch. One question for you guys, and I'm with you. But one question for you guys, and I think the market is kind of feeling this, is that the U.S. governments move to this kind of stable coin infrastructure, which is going to, you know, require buying of U.S. debt. Do you feel like that's kind of, you kind of kicked Bitcoin's can down the road, if you will, for another decade or something?

And that's one of the reasons why people aren't wanting to hold it right now. Stable coins are pegged to the U.S. dollar. So if currency starts to plummet and people are looking for alternatives, they're not going to go to stable coins, are they? Well, I mean, what I'm thinking is the way the market's perceiving it is that basically the U.S., This is given the U.S. the ability. What people are seeing now is with all the AIs and stuff coming out and this kind of infrastructure layer of stable coins is that the U.S. basically found a bigger global buyer,

which is basically everybody on Earth to buy their debt. And so in that way, basically kick the can down the road a little bit. I don't know how long, but kicked down the can down the road a little bit, where they're going to be able to keep printing. They're going to be able to keep raising, you know. But can't anybody now print a dollar? No, no. You have to, I mean, in theory, no.

So say let's take Zuck, right? Zuck's going to create a stable coin. Any bank can print a dollar. If you want to get regulated by the United States, then you have to do certain things. But outside, you know, it's a big world, actually. It is far, far, far, far, far bigger. outside the U.S. than inside the U.S.

So we're going to see tons of people who are going to be, you know, printing U.S. dollars all over the world and not giving a fuck about having U.S. government telling them what to do and the U.S. government able to, at a moment's notice, right, like they do with feather and circle, take your money. So you're thinking that people are going to print stable coins and people are going to actually use stable coins that aren't U.S. regulated stable coins? I would far more like to have a stable coin backed by Bitcoin, a stable coin backed by gold, than I would a stable coin back by the U.S.

Let's stick to U.S. stable coins as we're speaking of, which is U.S. dollar peg stable coins, right? I mean, show me an example of one that isn't going to be regulated in the U.S. I mean, I think it's pretty clear. Anyone who doesn't want to be regulated in the U.S.? Yeah, but who's not doing that? I mean, everybody wants to take money. Anybody who, look, look, if you tell me there is no market. Show me an example today of one that's working.

Nothing's working but tether a circle. We're at the very beginning of something, and if you're telling me that you think that's the way it's going to end. Do you think that's only going to expand? We've already seen it. There's already movements. That's what that's what meta has just shown us everybody's going to move in that direction. Of course they are. All the banks are going to be U.S.-based stables.

Right. So what you've done is you've basically. basically given every transaction globally can happen on U.S. rails, U.S. dollars, rather than whatever. Again, again, if you want to get regulated by the U.S. government, and then you've got to meet certain requirements that the U.S. government sets. One of them is, obviously, that the U.S. government can take whatever money they want at any time. And there is going to be a large part of the world who is not happy without a regime.

isn't that obvious to you that a large part of the world does not want the United States government at their whim to be able to take their money? Do you agree with that? No, no, not currently. Okay. No, no, you think everybody is thrilled with? Definitely not currently. Okay, then. Not currently. Then let's open up a polymarket bet about it. All right, sure, figure it out, figure out how to do that. I'm happy to take that bet. I think, I mean, look, this is what the market's telling us is that right now, show me how Bitcoin fits into this. This is why Bitcoin is super bearish right now. We don't feel. I mean, it could be wrong. The market may be wrong. But I'm saying right now, people have this idea of, you know, U.S. backed stable coins.

It's a big idea. And it's given the people, given investors, this idea that, oh, the U.S. government may be able to kick this can down the road for another, I don't even know, decade, 15 years. Okay. I'm just saying that's what I, I mean, if you disagree with that. You know, I personally try and minimize my mindset thinking about governments to two very simple beliefs. Belief number one, the government is not our friend. And belief number two, tomorrow is going to be worse.

And I'm here because in fact, it doesn't really matter. I agree with you, brother. I do agree with you. I do agree with you. And I, you know, I think all of us in the, you know, crypto space realize that this is going to collapse at some point, right? and you want to hold Bitcoin for that point. My feeling is, though, that just it's been, the stable coins gave the government this ability

to kick it down the road quite a bit. And that's why, that's my thesis on why the price is still going down. We need to see the, thanks. Stable coins are basically an extension of the tokenization of everything. So they're the tokenization of fiat currency. And your question is very interesting because what you're basically saying is because stable coins like Tether and Circle are mandated to have reserves of U.S. treasuries in their, you know, and basically anytime anybody prints them, they need to buy U.S. treasuries. And if we're talking about a total tokenization of the dollar, you're saying there's basically going to be an onboarding into crypto, which is. underneath the surface actually going to create demand for treasuries. And certainly that cannot be

discounted. However, it doesn't negate the picture that I've, or my thesis that I've laid out. The idea that government debt is toxic and that it relies on credibility. And the government now is undermining their own credibility at unprecedented rates, that would in my mind be a much is a much more powerful narrative than the onboarding into stable coins. And especially those who are purchasing stable coins, any bank can print money, can print dollars, any financially regulated institution, they loan money, they don't even need to have a reserve anymore. That was completely discontinued in the COVID crisis.

They don't even have to have a reserve anymore. They could just lend money to somebody, print it out of thin air, and therefore money is born, even at a local bank. And I think that that's happening a lot more than anything that's happening to stable coins. At least people who are involved in stable coins and who owns stable coins, I believe that they're a bit more financially savvy. And so the way that it's going to show up, if there is the credibility erosion that I'm talking about, is in the yields on treasury bonds. And once the yields on treasury bonds start spiking to extreme levels and people are still not buying them, I don't think that people are going to say, okay, well, I've got to move into stable coins right now if the dollar is tanking.

And so that's the underlying metric. People realize the erosion of the currency, they're not going to be buying stable coins. And then actually the dynamic that you're describing works in reverse. Because when people are out of stables, those stable coins have a less reserve requirement. And if they don't trust the governments anymore, and believe me, they don't, they're going to dump some of those treasurings. So it does go both ways. Robert. Yeah, so when it comes to demand for treasuries, I would agree that probably further out the curve, there are credibility issues.

And you have seen, you know, over the past, what, two and a half, three years, you have seen the curve steepen. But the plan here with stable coins is to cut the federal funds rate because we all know, you know, the tenure, the 20 year, the 30 year. They don't offer, you know, that yield is not based on what the Fed is doing. If anything, you know, if the Fed is overly easing, those rates might even go up, which is exactly what we've seen since the Fed started to cut rates. But the short end, you know, the T-bills, the one month, the three-month, the six-month, those just follow the Fed with a little bit of variation, you know, for what the Fed is going to do in the next couple months. But generally, they just follow the Fed. So if you have a situation like the U.S. government where interest is growing at 15% year over year in terms of the outlay where, you know, the average, if you take all the marketable debt, the average rate is 3.3. And there's nowhere on the yield curve where you can issue at 3.3. You have a problem. You know, right now it's about $3.5 billion per day. The government taxpayer is spending on interest, just on interest. So you have a problem. Well, the way that you can kind of reconcile the fact that you can't really necessarily term out the debt, you know,

and issue at the long end. The way you solve that is to cut the Fed funds rate to, I don't know, 1% and T-bill yields will follow. Then you just issue all your debt and T-bills. You finance the U.S. government in the cash market, which is very emerging market-like thing to do, but, you know, you can do it. It's dollar negative. So, you know, when it comes to the D.R. X, Y would expect, you know, depending on what Europe and other countries do, it's dollar negative, it's inflationary, all those things. But, you know, it is one way to kind of force the interest expense to stop growing. Because you have to, once you start issuing at 3.3 and your average issuance is at 3.3, then the $1.2 trillion per year, three and a half billion per day, that just

stops growing, right? It doesn't go down. It doesn't go down until you're able to bring that average of 3.3 lower. Well, again, we kind of know, you know, the 30 years probably not going there anytime soon, tenure, neither. So you just, you know, cut the Fed funds rate to, I don't know, 1%, 1.5. You issue all your debt there. You financially repress the TBO holders, but you need, you know, repressible balance sheet. Because, you know, money market funds, there's demand for the, the front end all the time. You look at the, the T bill auctions, the bid to covers like three and a half. You know, there's huge demand at the front end. But, you know, is there going to be that much demand when you're financially repressing T bill holders, you know, and running negative real rates?

Probably not. So it raises the question of like, well, how do we get new balance sheet to basically financially repress, right? To force people, bondholders, T bill holders, to take a loss in real purchasing power terms, stable coins are kind of the option. Now, the question becomes how much actual new balance sheet comes in during negative real rates. I don't think it's going to be a trillion or two trillion or three trillion. I think it's going to be probably $200 billion or $300 billion. Anyone thoughts? Go free to jump in. Dark side. I know you requested to come up on state. Oh, he just left later. Now I'm lost. Yeah, anyone comments on Robert?

It's an interesting conversation. If not, we can go in search of another topic. Let me take a look. Strategy now being the number one shorted stock globally is very interesting to me, to be honest, with obviously Darkside out of you. But Darkside, you came back when you heard your noise from the audience.

He's connecting. So this is going great. Darkside, you there? Yeah, sorry about that, man. I glitched out. happens to the best of us. Great space. Crazy to hear all the Dumer talk, man.

Wild. Yeah, look, I think that the point I would make is, I agree with a lot of what's being said as far as the gambit on stable coins. But you have to point out the obvious. That is, if we go ahead and force the dollar down the throat of the world, what does that do to 140 kind of shitty fiat currency?

around the world. Do we hyperinflate away the overwhelming majority of the entire world? And what does that do? I mean, I can't envision a world in which Russia, China, kind of other global superpowers allow us to destabilize the entire world. I mean, isn't that what being the global reserve currency means? I don't think so. They don't really have a choice. They don't really have a choice. I think that's...

I mean, if they had a choice, they would have replaced it. I'm not saying the dollar doesn't eventually die. Every global reserve currency eventually gets replaced. The question is if it's violently or slowly, but it's, you know, the bricks talk and not using dollars for trade and, you know, selling off treasuries to buy gold. Those are narratives that have been happening. And that's a, you know, drop in the bucket, I would say, against the United States dollar. I guess so, but again, you're talking about.

Again, you're talking about global political destabilization. The needle that's been thread is that, yes, while the dollar is the global reserve currency, nations around the world have been able to have their own currency. Their governments have had the ability to print money. Now you're going to yank that, you're going to yank that rug and expect that that's not going to cause massive global instability.

And I think it does. I don't think that gambit works. I guess I'm lost. Like, why would they, I must have missed to just the meeting there. Like, why would they not be able to print money? We have hundreds of governments that can. Yeah, but why would anybody use, let's just use the Egyptian pound? Why would anyone use the Egyptian pound if all of a sudden they had full access to tether?

Which they don't. I mean, the IMF wrote about that, right? I mean, that is a fear that the IMF said that it could basically replace. I don't think they said it would replace currencies in their initial report, but it was replacing the central banks of foreign governments. And then what are they going to do? I mean, does that gambit create, you know, 50, 100 North Korea's all over the globe that just cut off the Internet to save themselves?

And I think that's the real fear that you go down a really scary road where global governments begin to have massive crackdowns on their own people. basically the idea which has been long discussed that stable coins export hyper dollarization around the world and that i mean i don't see why it would stop at foreign central banks not at the fed as well by the way i agree with you what's the purpose of the fed at that point you might as well just retire all long-term debt and just have the treasury issue issue debt directly to the stable coin providers I mean, it's a massive gambit, right? Like, I think...

Well, yeah, but dark, one consequence of financing the government at the front end is the Fed, you know, should there be an inflationary, you know, an increase in inflation, we won't be able to hike rates. No. So there won't be any rate to hike. The Treasury should be issuing those bonds directly to the stable coin provider. What's the purpose of paying the Fed interest? I mean, you basically force the Fed into yield curve control, because as you said, Robert, if you go down this road, the long-term bond just goes through the roof and you can't have that happen. So now you have the Fed basically in full-blown yield curve control and let's just retire the 30-year, the 10-year, the five-year, and let's just finance everything in 90 days or less. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't disagree because then, you know, there will be in.

inflation. There will be probably another, you know, I don't think we're never going back to three or four percent CPI. And, you know, you get into a situation where, okay, well, we can't really high rates to combat inflation. That's very dollar negative. That's what you see emerging markets get into, where they've lost the ability to defend the currency. And, you know, that's very, very negative for the currency. Right, which leads to the death of Fiat. I'm not sure who was saying that earlier, but I agree completely. I mean, Fiat is at its dying days, right? And these are, you know, in the dying days of your currency, you try gambits.

You try crazy concepts to maintain it. So it was Ray Dalio who said that. No, I know Ray Dalio. It was you, Matt, Marty. I'm sorry. Maddie, my bad. But yeah, no, I don't see a, I don't really see a good way out here.

I'm with Maddie on this. I think the stable coin thing is a massive gambit. I think it fails. I think it leads to yield curve control. And then the death of the death of fiat globally. Man, you came in hot with scared of the doomerism, and we got even doomer, doomerismer. I was being a little sarcastic there, brother.

Yeah. No, I know. It's always, always, you know, when we really get into the actual meat of the dissonation, discussion on why Bitcoin matters and what, you know, is happening underneath the surface. It's impossible not for there to be. I think some tumorism, if you actually have spent time here. So important to talk about to continue.

I think we've covered everything we wanted to or about five minutes from the end. So we're going to be back on a couple days. Next Cryptotown Hall, everybody in the audience, give everybody on stage a follow, or at least a wave or a emoji or kiss. I don't know. And otherwise, we'll see you in a couple days. Thank you. Bye.