The Wolf Of All Streets - Are Bitcoin & Crypto Doomed?! | Tariff Wars Explode!

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

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Trade wars are exploding with tariffs, the likes of which the world has never seen its tariff Palooza, if you will, but Bitcoin and crypto actually holding up relatively nicely as other markets seem to be imploding across the board. Is it a sign of the great decoupling of Bitcoin or is there more pain to come? We're going to talk about this and, of of course all of the main news stories from this week on the Friday 5 and LW and I are ready.

Are you? Let's go. 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 and hit that like button. Gonna bring on NLW Tariff Palooza. Everybody gets a tariff. It's like an Oprah episode. You get a tariff and you get a tariff. You get a tariff everybody. Yeah. Sorry, you I think I'm your your videos about two seconds behind your sound. So I don't know which is correct. But

yeah, it's I mean, look, the the tariffs were always going to be the big story this week. They are indeed the big story this week. Maybe the big story this month. Definitely the big story this year. It's it's tariff time. And no one has any goddamn idea what it all is going to turn out to be. And anyone who says that they do is lying to themselves or to you or to both. I mean, it's either 40 chess or 1D checkers. And I really have no idea which one it is at this point. I mean, if you look at the comments of the Senate, who's obviously a smart guy and Lutnick

and Trump, it seems like there's a greater plan here. But generally, tariffs are not used's a greater plan here, but generally tariffs are not used as a blunt force instrument against every person you can possibly find. Usually they're very narrow and targeted and temporary, and it really feels like they're causing purposeful mayhem. Now I guess the people who are huge fans of Trump and the administration will tell you that this is about a strategy to bring down rates, force the fed to reduce,

to bring manufacturing back home to stimulate the economy. Some of that makes sense. Critics will tell you that, oh, China just went ahead and hit us back with a 34% tariff, which shows that they're not really scared or willing to negotiate. I don't think anybody, as you said, has any idea what's going on, but I also don't think we're going to relent here.

I think it's very ugly. Absolutely. So I mean, I think that you have, you can kind of divide the world into three different areas, right? On the one hand, you've got the people who are just going to hate this policy no matter what, which includes people who dislike Trump. And then also a lot of people who have kind of like, you know, a traditional background in economics who think that this is insane, right? Everyone's rereading, you know, up on Smoot Hawley. So there's that whole category. Unfortunately, like, that group doesn't really have that much to offer the conversation right now, because the thing is happening, right? Whether it was stupid or not, like, the thing is now here. There's no historical precedent that we can really look to. And even historical precedents are really only useful in before a decision is made. So here we are. And so then you have kind of these two other groups. The one of the complicated

things, I think, is that the people who are in the support this side have very, very different logics for why they are supporting this or why they think it's a good idea. To your point, some of them say it's about bringing rates down. Some of them about say it's about fairness in the global system. For some, it's about a restructuring of the economic order. For others, it's about, you know, a new way of distributing, you know, the sort of the cost burden of a society away from things like individual taxes towards tariffs. Others think that it's just a power play based on where the U.S. sits in the world. Like, and I think that the challenge is that this administration has at various points kind of vaguely articulated all of those things. But it's not clear which, you know, what the, what the ranked order is of priority, which is the most important relative to the others. And it makes it hard to kind of understand what they're

driving towards. And that's not just relevant for us kind of sitting here job-owning about it. It's relevant for investors who are making decisions about what to do with this, right? If the goal is to reshore manufacturing, that's a generational process where you really need people to be convinced that these policies are not just a temporary tool to change negotiations, but instead some long-term consistent thing. And I think, you know, Trump is answering that critique sort of by screaming that his policies are never going to change on truth social, which is a recent message that was posted. But anyways, the point is that I think that the lack of clarity around which of the 10 possible types of 40 chest that this could be, it is or that they're going for, is tough. I also think, frankly, that people didn't believe Trump that he was going to do this in the first place. I don't think

anyone really did. Now people are in the new denial is that Besson and Lutnick are actually on board with this. I think there's a lot of sense that like their hand is sort of forced and the version of this that maybe they were on board with isn't this version, but you know, they're, they're under Trump. So what are they going to do? And, and who knows, maybe that's right. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe they're full throatedly interested in it. But the point is that when it comes to the market having any sort of anything that they can hang their hat on, there's just nothing there. The middle area, the last sort of group of people are the people who are trying to without being kind of like blithely dismissive or blithely accepting of anything that comes, like analyzing this from the standpoint of how likely it is to have the desired impact, whichever of those

potential 40 chest moves it is. And I think that the challenging thing is that most of those folks, at least that I'm seeing, are coming away from this with just a really strong sense of not seeing how this approach to shock and awe actually delivers that. Balaji Srinivasan made an analogy basically to a 98-year-old man who used to be able to bench press 315 pounds, hasn't bench pressed in 50 years, and tries to go straight to 315 pounds, and how does that work out? His point being that you can't unwind, I think the exact phrase is you can't unwind 45 years of policy with 45% tariffs. And so even if that's what you're trying to do, it just seems unlikely to succeed. But, you know, look, we are now officially in the most aggressive, large scale turn on a dime economic pivot in the history of modernity. And, and I don't see it going away. So all we have to do is what's next? It's interesting because he obviously said this is policy that he will not relent

We saw China come over the top as I mentioned but then Adding to the confusion I think in the frustration for a lot of people is any gives an interview and says yeah We're totally negotiating and open to, you know, phenomenal offers of negotiation, which by the way, anyone would be rationally. If you get a great offer, you take it. But I just think that there's been wildly inconsistent messaging from Trump himself to some degree,

but more than that from other people close to him. You have the one side that's aggressively saying, you know, this will replace the IRS, it's going to bring so much revenue into the United States, tariffs are amazing. And then you have others with a full-throated commentary that this is a negotiation tactic to get rid of evil, unfair trade, and to get rid of tariffs as a whole. And you can't have both of those things. And I think it just speaks to this incredible chaos and uncertainty that we've had that markets hate. I mean, you can take a look really quickly at pre-market.

I mean, Dow is down 929. It was down as much as 1200 this morning. I'm old enough to remember, and I'm not gonna hold it against him because things change. But when Trump literally tweeted, if the Dow goes down 1000 points in a day, the president should be immediately impeached.

More than happened yesterday and is about to happen likely today. I mean, we're talking about 2% across the board pre-market after the worst day in four years when we had the S&P down 5%, NASDAQ 6%. Now 10-year yield is 3.93 here, it was 3.9. Just a few moments ago Dow was down was over 1000 points down, maybe a little relief crude oil at 62 crashing, obviously, that's a good sign for consumers at the

pump. But I mean, you can talk for days about what people think we know right now what markets think. And it's not great. That said, taking a look at the crypto market, Bitcoin is up 1.15% in 24 hours, Ethereum up 1.22. In fact, everything that's not a stable coin in the top 10 is up in the last 24 hours. What do you make of Bitcoin's resilience in the face of this insanity?

It's effectively been $82,500 all week. It's gone up and down around that, but that's where it's been at the open and close of every day for now a week Yeah, I mean everything outside of Bitcoin you kind of have to feel like it's Nihilism and and who cares and throw it to the world We might as well try to get rich on the way out. I think with Bitcoin I mean look there there are a million possibilities, but I do think that it makes sense like

Bitcoin and markets tend to be correlated when times are fine and then start to see the decoupling a little bit when Bitcoin has to shift into this other gear. One of the things that makes Bitcoin interesting, and why I've never been much for the critique that it looks like a stock sometimes and and gold other times is that it's kind of designed to part of what makes it as amazing portfolio asset is that it can have the dynamics of a risk asset when people are piling in who aren't necessarily in the exact kind of profile or buyer profile at any given time, and sort of get the gains alongside markets as that's

happening. But it also has a very different profile on the other side. And the, the attributes that make it exciting when times are bad obviously rise to the fore and in conversation and narrative and conception and value when, when times get more chaotic. And I think that that's obviously a thing that's happening now. And, you know, in a world of extreme volatility, extreme predictability looks very, very appealing, right? You also have the fact, I think, that one of the great things, which I think we actually do not talk about enough, or at least market analysts don't talk about enough, because they haven't fully appreciated, is that Bitcoin has another thing besides its sort of intrinsic properties of, you know, only 21 million fixed supply, fixed schedule and all that sort of stuff. It now has the most robust defensive base of holders of any asset on the planet. There are a huge number of people who will never under any circumstances sell their Bitcoin. And that has

almost become an intrinsic property of the thing, which again, in moments of extraordinary volatility, like make make a difference. And so, you know, I think you're seeing a little bit of that. And then I think the last thing is that, you know, Bitcoin probably as a holder base has a higher percentage of people who are at least, you know, who are long termists in general, and who are kind of willing to see what radical change, you know, who are comfortable with the idea of radical change, even if this might not be the radical change they preferred, and are kind of willing to rock and roll with it. I think that you've seen this, you know, Nick Carter has sort of expressed some of this where I don't think that he's not pumping it here, where he's kind of full-throated defending the tariffs. But he also is sort of, you know, playing the role of reminding people that there are a lot of

people in the, in the base that are going to not judge a policy based on what the stock market does over two days of trading. So I think all of those reasons combined could be partial explanation of why Bitcoin is holding a little bit more steady. I agree with that entirely. The only thing is people are gauging the stock market's performance because Trump has always said that his gauge of the success of his presidency is the stock market's performance. I mean, he even said, you know, Bitcoin should be $150,000 in my first six months. It'll be one of the things that I look at as a marker of my success. I agree that people voted for change. I am fully on board for breaking whatever

we were doing before, because it's never worked. But it's very hard to say, I look at markets as a gauge of my success and then say, I'm perfectly happy to destroy markets to the voters who thought that you were going to do otherwise. I don't think people expected austerity and tariffs at this level and to do this to the market at this time. I will give the benefit of the doubt. I will say maybe they know what they're doing and I just don't understand

what it is. But right now it seems like chaos. Yeah, I don't think anyone actually knows what they're doing. I think that the only question, the benefit of the doubt is whether they might be right. Like even if they don't know what they're doing is sort of the thing here. You know, Austin Campbell had a great tweet about this. I think that you're right that this is a, this is not the Trump that people thought they were going to get, but boy, is it the Trump that he's decided to be this time.

And he has made it very clear that this is, this is the Trump that he wants to be and do. So Austin Campbell tweeted yesterday, we've gone from far left populist anti-progress economics straight into far right populist anti-progress economics when neither candidate ran on that platform. I did not have Trump as right wing Biden or Warren for 2025. Now whether that's a fully accurate kind of depiction. I think there's directionally a lot of people feel like that's that that's what they're feeling right now and and it's part of why

markets have nowhere to look anymore. You know, it's it's sort of bombs from all sides. Yeah, it's could get worse before it gets better. Let's just hope that that's the path that we're on is the getting better part. The next story since we've talked tariffs to death for a couple days here, is stablecoin giant circle files for IPO after 1.7 billion stablecoin reserve windfall. If approved, the stock of the company will be trading on the New York Stock Exchange under symbol CRCL. This isn't the first rodeo for Circle attempting to go public didn't go so well last time. I think they get there this time.

By the way, the most beautiful part of this is that it's being handled by JP Morgan for the record. Yeah. I mean, I think that they do get there. I think that a lot of the discussion is, I mean, one, people can't help but compare their financials to Tether, not necessarily in a super favorable light. Second, I think that, you know, generally speaking, there is a sense that this is a real sneak it under the wire effort. There's a very short period of time, it seems like, before the giants in the space are gonna be able to come in and start issuing their own stable coins.

And so, you know, it's kind of this, get some capitalization, get some liquidity before that happens. And I think even know, it's kind of this get some capitalization, get some liquidity before that happens. And I think even if you're a big supporter of circle, that's you know, it kind of feels like that is part of this, the strategy here is that it's not desperation, but like, it's a move that has to happen right now, because it's going to get more, not less challenging.

Yeah, there's some who think that this is a bad idea. I this we've got cranky cranky old man. Cranky old pet of stable coins. Kevin Letnitty, can you pronounce his name? Come on, I'll give you a $10. I would say Letnitty. Letnitty, okay. Letnitty.

Lee Tyne, I-t-t-t. Warns of circles costly path to IPO amid shrinking profits. Interesting, argues that circles position as the second largest stable coin issue is not secure largely because the market is becoming saturated and commoditized. Do you think that circle is too late here?

I don't agree with this by the way. I do think we're going to get a billion stable coins. We'll have private stable coins from every bank. We'll have Elon stable coin and meta stable coin and all those things. But I think Circle is well past the point of no return as far as adoption and and their user base. Yeah, I think I think that it's a stronger company than people are giving it credit for by by looking at these financials.

Okay, the next story, which we've talked about, Larry Fink's slow orange pilling over the years many times, but holy crap, man, if we didn't wanna see the final form here, we got it. The democratization of investing here, BlackRock's letter, annual letter that he writes to investors. He's been writing about crypto, by the way, for years. It was two years ago that he talked about the ETF before it got approved, but also talked

at length about the tokenization of everything. Well, now he's fully saying that if the United States continues on its fiscal path, that Bitcoin can become the global reserve currency. I mean, even the most diehard of Bitcoiners sometimes say, I don't know if it could get to global reserve currency status, man. And Larry Fink here going full Kaiser, full Satoshi, full you name it as orange peeled as you can possibly get he's reached the end of the line. Yep. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that he's both he's using it both as a sort of an upside and a downside as a as a as a fear kind of, you know, a weapon of an instrument of fear to talk about how much needs to change, but also a place that you can hedge if you happen to have that fear.

where he's been headed. If you if you charted his change in trajectory, this is this is absolutely sort of the end state. So, you know, I think that what what continues to make him a valuable voice is that he is not cheering these things on he does not you know, have a burn baby burn shirt on you know, you know, there's no down with the fed, right? Rippin dollar $100 bills in half at the Bitcoin conference and throwing them in the air, right? Exactly.

And so it just obviously carries a lot more weight by virtue of that fact. So you know, look, anything like this, you know, sort of strong, full throated endorsement in these kind of times is I think very, very important for everyone. Yeah, it's just been among a sea of craziness and insanity and prices up and down. It's just been the most consistent voice, the silver lining on everything that's happened with our industry over the past few years. And eventually I really think that

the most powerful people are going to listen and it's going to make a huge difference. It already has. I mean, the approval of the BlackRock spot ETF among the others and the way that he positioned himself around it is arguably the reason that we're trading at 80 instead of 50 or 60 right now. I 100% think it is. I've said it before.

I think that he put a stop in the slide post-SPF. I mean, there was a reasonable argument to be made that the industry was just dead after that in America, at least. And he said, nope, it's not. And we're going to make money from it. Yeah, and they're going to make a lot of money from it. The next story we have here is the Solana Policy Institute.

We're excited to announce the launch of Solana Policy Institute, a new nonpartisan, nonprofit focused on educating policymakers on how decentralized networks like Solana are the future infrastructure of the digital economy, why the people are building on and using them need legal certainty to flourish. I love when I see these double dash marks that let you know that even the Solana Policy Institute is

writing their tweets with ChatGPT. There's no human being uses those. Do you know that the generation, Gen Z or Gen Alpha is now calling these the chat GPT dash, not the M dash? Is it really? I didn't even know that. So there you go. And this is actually pretty big blockchain associates and CEO, Kristen Smith is leaving to work with the Solana advocacy group here. So clearly, Solana making a play to prove that they're not just a meme coin casino here. Yeah, I mean, so this is a story that I don't think

would normally make our register. It would be interesting, honorable mention category, maybe part of a larger DC story. What makes this particular interesting is so, one, Miller White has Levine leaving the DeFi Education Fund, you know, which was hugely influential in a lot of these court cases over the last couple of years, was largely, was very associated with Ethereum. It was largely funded by a grant from the Uniswap Foundation. So that, that's sort of big on its own. But then Kristin Smith moving over from Blockchain Association, I think, I think people would have imagined

that, I mean, that, that was her baby, right? It was sort of like the thing that she had built. So the fact that there's a move there seems notable. Now, of course, this could all just be money. Maybe the Solana Policy Institute is just paying a lot of money. And it's as simple as that. But to the extent that it's not that, or at least it's not only that, it is, it is pretty notable in terms of where, like, the voices are going to come from in DC. I honestly as someone who's you know fine with Solana and has no sort of beef with them and things that generally you know they found an important niche in the space, I don't love the extent to which some of the most powerful policy voices in Washington are now associated with a single asset. I think you know I'm sure that they're going to say that Solana Policy Institute is not just advocating for Solana, but I mean, it's probably inevitable. Ultimately, industry associations, the way that they evolve is it's more about whoever's paying the bills than it is about the underlying, but it's interesting.

Is this the short of it? Hopefully they really can represent sort of the whole industry, not just Solana, but we'll see. Yeah, but non-specific just Solana, but we'll see. Yeah, but non-specific to Solana, this was always the way that this was eventually going to end. We had this unified lobby that came together to defeat the common enemy in the last administration, but we all know from spending any amount of time in this industry or on crypto Twitter that the tribalism and self-interest in this market is second to none. And that that would obviously fracture from a cohesive singular lobby to lobbies for the

individual assets and programs, which is not that surprising. Yep. Right. I mean, that's the way that this would happen. Like there's a bank lobby and then there's Goldman Sachs lobbying for Goldman Sachs. It's not as surprising. It's par for the course, but interesting to see how it happens. Let's hope that at the end of the day, like you said, it's for crypto as a whole and not

specifically to Solana. We don't want this to turn into a, hey, SPF's on the hill lobbying for crypto. And you realize that he was literally just lobbying against all of crypto in the interest of FTX. Yeah, not even really FTX as much as him. But yeah, I will say that I think that that both Miller and Kristen have have earned the the biggest benefit of that when it comes to being able to represent the you know the the industry as a whole. So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, that was all of the official stories we had. I think just a final honorable mention, SEC nominee Atkins advanced by Senate Banking Committee. We know that Hester Perce has been the acting SEC commissioner, but Atkins is going to get in. He's smart, generally an advocate for the industry. We thought that about Gary Gensler too, so I'm always a little gun shy about supporting anyone at the SEC, but I do think that he's the real deal and will be a benefit to our industry just like all the other appointments largely have. I'm burned out. I got to see it before I believe it. The only person at the SEC that's got my full full throated support is is Esther purse. I guess Mark Kuwait has earned it at this point too. But yeah, he looks better. He looks better. But I'm old enough to remember when I said that about

Gensler on the show. Yeah, and we all did right? He's not blockchain at MIT guys, you know, and our last honorable mention that we had, how stable coin bill advances in US house with support of Trump and Democrats. So this is interesting because obviously we had the genius legislation passing through the Senate Financial Committee. Now we have the stable act coming out of the house committee.

Looks like stable coins very much the low hanging fruit that will get legislated. I actually recorded a podcast that will be out on Sunday with Kirsten Gillibrand, who was one of the authors of the genius act that was yesterday. I said, Hey, how are these bills different? And she said, this one literally passed 20 minutes ago, dude, like let my team get on it. And we'll mark it up. Right? So these are these are getting marked up. But

I can tell you that even the person who's most on the front lines with all of this is still trying to wrap her head around the differences, which parts need to be incorporated, and how they get one cohesive bill to give it a better chance of passing because that's what she wants. Yeah. I mean, look, I think that it would be very good to get these points on the board.

I think that we should get this done. I'm looking forward to seeing continued progress. I continue to watch this issue of interest bearing as the sort of big stucking point. We talked last week about how it seemed like a, you know, banking lobby talking point around interest bearing and sure enough, it was a banking lobby talking point.

So that's the thing that I'm watching, but I think I'm still generally optimistic about this getting through in a way that's net positive. Absolutely agree guys. That's all we've got for you today. I mean, the market's probably just opening right now. I don't even want to... Bitcoin's at 83,000. So listen, this is generally a crypto show. Whatever happens to markets, Bitcoin is actually up on the last two days, which is absolutely astounding. Maybe this is our moment. Maybe. It's always maybe our moment. That's what great. Maybe this is our moment. Maybe.

I have no idea. It's always maybe our moment. That's what great. It's always maybe our moment. That should be like my Twitter description. It's always maybe our moment. I love it. Guys, give the breakdown.

I listen every single day. And of course, give NLW a follow on both YouTube X and everywhere else. And we'll see you guys next week. Thanks, man. Later. Let's go.