The Wolf Of All Streets - Are More People Buying Bitcoin? Live Panel With Noelle Acheson, Eowyn Chen & Haider Rafique

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Live panel with Noelle Acheson Crypto (Macro Now newsletter), Eowyn Chen (CEO of Trust Wallet) & Haider Rafique (CMO of OKX). https://twitter.com/NoelleInMadrid https://twitter.com/EowynChen https://www.linkedin.com/in/haidersf ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/ ►►BITGET GET UP TO A $8,000 BONUS IN USDT AND GET MASSIVE DISCOUNTS ON TRADING FEES! 👉 https://thewolfofallstreets.info/bitget ►►NORD VPN GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

While there's never a lack of topics or exciting things happening in the world that we can discuss on Thursdays, I would say that today we probably have more hot things to discuss than we've ever had in before between bank failures, the movement of Bitcoin, and now, of course, Coinbase threatening to counter sue the SEC. Wow. There's a lot to talk about. And I have three incredible guests as always to do it. I've got Noel Heider and Eoin here today. You guys do not want to miss this. Let's go. discuss, it's almost hard to determine what direction to take a conversation these days. We always sort of joke, there's the phases, they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they win. I would say it's very clear that as far as the United States government, at least we are in the

then they fight you phase. White House this week coming out with some aggressive language towards crypto assets, effectively saying that they have no fundamental value. Of course, increased rhetoric and enforcement and Wells notices from the SEC, particularly towards Coinbase yesterday. And then Brian Armstrong's very strong worded response saying that they would defend the industry with all they had. And in my opinion, Coinbase is exactly the person, the entity that we want doing that because they have both the war chest and seemingly the facts on their side. To discuss all of this, I have our three guests. I'm going to bring them on right now. Noelle Atchison, Haider Rafiq, and Eowyn Chen from Trust Wallet. Good morning, everybody. I think we all need a deep breath to get ready for what's likely coming.

Noelle, it's your first time here. Let's just talk about Coinbase first. What do you make of this sort of increased rhetoric from the SEC and now, in my opinion, poking the biggest beast that they possibly could? It's game on time, Scott. It really is game on. I know this is a big overhang for the industry and it's hard to put a positive spin on this, but I'm going to try and put a positive spin on this anyways. Uncertainty is never good, but we knew something like this was coming. I personally thought that Gary Gensler, the SEC chair, wouldn't dare to go this far simply because he doesn't want to lose a very public battle. We have the Ripple case nearing its conclusion. Perhaps he might lose that. We have the Grayscale case.

The SEC might lose that too. Would he really want another high profile loss? Because it's certainly not a given that the SEC would win this one when it comes even just to the time. Coinbase arguably has more time than the current administration of the SEC might indeed have. And when it comes to funding, Coinbase probably has an easier time raising more capital, especially if the market is improving, than the SEC would in getting more budget for this, especially since the House would want to see,

fine, enforcement is good, but they want to see successful enforcement. So poke the big bear, game on. This will go to court. A court will decide, and it's not necessarily going to go in favor of the SEC, which would be a very big step forward for the industry. Not only is it not necessarily going to go in favor, there's been actually strong pushback from the judicial system in the few

attempts of late for the SEC to push against this industry. I mean, in the Voyager case, the bankruptcy judge effectively outright dismissed everything the SEC had to say. And Grayscale had a very good opening sort of salvo against the SEC as well, where the judges were dismissive. So it seems like it's important for people to remember, just because the SEC says it doesn't mean it's true. I mean, Eowyn, what do you make of what's happening right now? Yeah, I actually feel very excited last night when i saw coinbase are going to take the core fight i think that's what the industry absolutely needed um because it's very clear that the sec is not necessarily having a very objective stance anymore

with regards to the regulation it has a very clear agenda towards the industry as a whole and it's no longer just say that hey the bad actors are doing bad actor things. So we're the righteous justice. We're going after everyone. It's very clear that they're going after everybody. And I think it's a wake up call for the industry that, you know, as an industry, do we want to grow and sustain and survive in the U.S. and do that well and for the people by having that fair share of the impact of the technology that we wanted to have. And if that's the case, we are benefited from a rule of law country. We should take up what we are equipped and empowered

to do it rather than just being scared by a big government as if we were in any other parts of the world that there's no way of the rule of the law that we could use as a as a toolkit to seek for justice so um i was very i i feel very empowered and i'm excited with the coinbase uh i'm very excited about the the things that they are taking And I think that the industry should honestly get together and we should not fight internally. I know that there has been lobbying internally just against each other. It doesn't help, right?

Right now is the time just to make a public presence, make a public, better impression about what crypto actually is about instead of throwing each other under the bus. Like it's not the time anymore. We should do our fair share of representing the industry to win a long term game. What do you think? You're obviously at an exchange.

So I would imagine if you're sitting in your shoes, you would say, I've had a coin base on behalf of everybody. Enjoy. Do it for all of us. I think so. I think so. Well, look, I agree with Noel and Owen and with this sentiment they shared. I echo the same thing. I would put more emphasis on the fact that this is a great opportunity for that division to go away, like Owen was saying. After the FTX collapse, naturally you saw differentiating points of views in the industry. And sometimes when I

reflect on our, you know, vertical, our industry, crypto versus traditional banking, what's disappointing is you don't actually see executives of big banks, big financial institutions go at it against each other publicly on a forum like Twitter. So I think perhaps this is that milestone, that moment, that really does bring all the companies, the firms, executives together behind a common purpose. And you certainly saw that yesterday after Brian tweeted and a lot of folks from other firms doubled down and backed him, including us. So I think it's a great moment for the

industry to at least come down and have a come together and have a cohesive voice on this on this matter. And if I can jump in with a quick thought on that, Scott, if that's OK. What is the battle that's being fought here? This is the prelude to an enforcement action by the SEC, the US financial regulator against Coinbase, a US-based exchange, although Coinbase has said that they are looking at setting up an offshore platform. They're boosting their operations in Brazil. They're boosting operations in Europe. So when it comes to what is the battle that is being fought, is the SEC coming for us? I would argue argue and I can say this based in Europe that they're coming for the institutional or not the institutional focus I would say the US-based

platforms uh offering offering services to US-based individuals and businesses but this isn't going to deter crypto from continuing to evolve crypto is continuing to build in other jurisdictions talent and capital is migrating, as it can very easily, unlike other industries, because crypto is so mobile. So in the end, the battle is smaller than the headlines would lead us to believe. Obviously, the U.S. is the world's largest financial market. It is certainly significant. And if crypto is suppressed in the world's largest financial capital, then that would be a barrier to some development. But it's certainly very far from game over. Crypto is

going to continue to involve in more supportive jurisdictions. Again, this is very much unlike other industries that are not as mobile and that are very much more jurisdiction dependent. Crypto actually isn't. Yeah, I actually wanted to quickly comment and follow up with what Noah was saying. I think that's absolutely right. Yet last night when things are happening, I have my Twitter very much divided in terms of content. Like the US-based content is just all about the potential legal regulatory situation with the crypto industry. And my other part of the following are talking completely different things. They actually don't care that much about it.

They are all talking about here's a new product that's launching. Here's a new thing that's going after. And then here's a new exciting. Yeah, it's like much more optimistic outside of the U.S. versus what we see inside of the US. I think then the question is, what do we want in the US as the future of this part of the technology? It's clearly starting to divide and it's going to be a much more complex question to ponder upon

instead of just seeing crypto as a potential rivalry to US dollar or to US banking system because there's going to be much bigger geopolitical agenda. And if US wants to let this one go, pushing everyone offshore, talents moving elsewhere, having assumption that this industry doesn't go bigger, there's someone else in the world,

and very likely quite a lot of them, are interested to see that if this can be the future opportunity to leapfrog what the traditional banking system that the U.S. has been dominating for the past century. Could it be that this is a preamble to a bigger strategy by the U.S. government? I think we have one reference point from another large nation that decided to ban crypto, have a blanket crypto ban right before or around them themselves launching their own digital currency. I know there's been rumors, there's been chatter about the U.S. taking that strategy to limit the use of uh crypto or access to crypto markets for u.s customers in light of that future event to happen i don't know but uh that certainly does cross my mind

and just imagine if the us is taking the playbook from china i mean the political repercussions of even just that headline just imagine it's It is certainly interesting, the timing, especially given that FedNow is coming online this summer as well, but coincides also with weakness in the banking industry, banking sector in the United States. And many, we've seen, this is a part of the conversation I imagine we'll have, we've seen many individuals as well as businesses get involved in crypto, specifically Bitcoin,

because of the banking fragility that is becoming increasingly apparent in the United States. This implies looming political pressure. Just imagine, again, we are coming up to the elections and the government is going, the administration is going to be accused of having denied individuals the opportunity to safeguard some of their investments by investing in an alternative asset. They're going to have some questions to answer for sure, and especially if the market does well between now and then, which it looks like it will. It's interesting. I can't find it. I was just trying to.

But I saw in passing that there was a memo or something about a central bank digital currency from the United States that came out in the last two days, sort of with the same timing of this SEC enforcement. And I would say too much to be coincidence with the timing of the White House changing their rhetoric, because the White House, I think, for the last year, year and a half has said, hey, let's look at this. It's reasonable. These assets are not going anywhere. Let's just come up with a framework. Everybody with a three letter agency, go do your job, figure out what part you're going to play in this. And now all of a sudden,

it was these assets have no fundamental value. It seems like a very, very meaningful shift, which leads me to Haider's tin hat thinking that maybe this is more about centralization in a central bank digital currency which I think we can talk about now whether that is the intention or not it's still worthy I think to discuss what a central bank digital currency would mean any of you can jump it well I'll happily jump in first because this is something I've been thinking quite a lot about not just obviously what the U.S is, but what's happening around the world. We're seeing a lot of pilots going on outside of the US,

experimenting between wholesale versus retail. We're also seeing some announcements come through in the US of the political tensions that would emerge should the United States decide to press ahead with the retail version. We have Governor DeSantis, as well as Senator Ted Cruz, decide that their state's not gonna have any of this,

thank you very much, which opens up a whole political can of worms. Can they even do that? Can the federal government impose the use of a certain currency, et cetera? For me, all of that says that this is just too political. This is too much of a political hot potato for the United States to try to impose retail CBDC. They'll try to go the wholesale route first. And again, especially

with the desire probably to distance themselves from the China playbook for political reasons. But we're overlooking the fact that this administration doesn't have much longer to go. Maybe it will win the next elections, maybe not. Either way, big political change is afoot. And what we're looking at, both in the um hostility i would say as well as the intentions of the cbdc they're political i think that's 100 true yeah hi i just wanted to say i to noel's point and then jump in the last thing i had on my bingo card for 2023 was china reopening services to the crypto industry while the united states shut them down. That was not something that I was expecting by March of 2023. Go ahead, Haider.

Yeah, well, including you, I'm also excited about China opening back up. I think the COVID sort of restrictions are gone, but I'm disappointed that the Grand Prix is off the table for this year, which is something we were, of course, looking forward to. I am less thinking about the politics around this initiative, this possible initiative. My thinking more goes towards what utility does an American citizen get from an asset like this? And what role does an asset like this play in the possible deprecation of the US dollar globally, especially as it relates to the petrodollar?

Now you're seeing different countries transact to trade oil, not using the US dollar. What would this mean for our foreign policy, for our relations with Saudis and what have you? That's something that I'm still puzzled about. And I'm keen to see if Noel, you or Owen have any thoughts on it. So my understanding of CBDC is very preliminary. I'm very much with you, Hayter. I probably will look at more from the benefits and the impact to the crypto industry. So in general, I think a more digital version of the assets can help with the easier and lower friction onboarding for crypto because it will be much more easier to onboard from

a digital version of a dollar to another digital version of another asset. However, if assuming that it's got 100% coverages of CBDC replacing all the US dollar, there is also a potential impact is that if the political environment and the regulation doesn't change, because as of right now, banking, US dollar banking is becoming a choke point for US dollar fiat assets to onboard, you could also mean that it makes it easier to

hold those choke points for fiat onboard for the future. So that's just, you know, there are benefits for friction, but if those gateway don't open, it means nothing. It probably is going to be more fringing. So I don't know which side that you will play out. That's why probably the politics will continue to be very important. I've always believed that a central bank digital currency is bullish for certainly Bitcoin, but for the crypto space in general, because the lack of understanding, complex UX, UI,

when we've talked about this quite a bit in the past. But once governments force people to open a digital wallet and transact digitally, and then those people then will have a much easier time making the jump, I think. People who have just been dismissive of it, it's too complicated, it's too hard. I think we're sort of on these converging paths where our UX UI is getting better and people's understanding is getting better and they're going to bring people to the table. So it doesn't, I mean, I think it's problematic, obviously, from a regulatory and legislative standpoint, but people are going to find a way. I don't know if you guys share that, but I don't really think CBDCs are a threat. I think they're actually a catalyst. There is the privacy issue, which a lot of people are very concerned about. Politicians are concerned about this also. And we're seeing some governments,

such as India and, gosh, I forget where else the European was talking about making sure that were CBDCs to go retail, there would be some privacy protections in there, which is obviously very encouraging to hear. But does anyone trust this as the only factor? Is the privacy issue that is going to be a very big political hot potato there? But I totally agree with you, Scott. I think there are ways around that. Innovation finds a way and the crypto ecosystem is nothing if not very, very innovative. There are privacy features that could probably end up being enabled. Again, do we trust them? But yes, they are. And you're so right. When we all have to have a digital wallet on our phone, the innovation that can be layered on top of that is indeed

very exciting. I personally don't believe we are going to see a retail CBDC anytime soon, if ever. The United States, for the simple reason they don't need it. FedNow is pretty much going to do anything that a CBDC would have done. And the political fragility of the system is actually going to be prominent in the debates. It's something that is going to exacerbate the divide they're already seeing. I think wholesale CBDCs are going to tie into what Haider was saying, which is in the role of the dollar in world trade, that it's not in spite of the sudden boost in the swap lines that the Fed implemented last week in response to the banking stress that is now spreading to other countries for different reasons.

There are still countries, as Owen mentioned, that are totally choked off from the dollar system. Bolivia is running on fumes because it cannot get access to dollars. Lebanon, many countries, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, they're tied. They cannot get access to the dollars they need to pay for basic commodities. And why is this? This is the weaponization of the dollar that is increasingly going to become a point of concern in the geopolitical landscape as it realigns itself around the new centers of power that are emerging wholesale cbdc they're actually end up going to end up being a lot more powerful as a tool in cementing or reshaping the U.S role in that evolving landscape you talk about countries like Bolivia. I think for me, then, the mental jump is not only how

good that is for Bitcoin or that people would adopt it, but really that stable coins are the killer app there because it gives people access to U.S. dollars and U.S. dollar liquidity, which is what you're probably seeking in a country with hyperinflation. There will be a small percentage of people who get it and say, I want Bitcoin long term. But if you're just trying to get in and out of your small daily transactions, a digital wallet with USDT or USDC seems to be the way. So, Ewan, I want to ask you anecdotally from the evidence, obviously, you're the CEO of Trust Wallet. Are you seeing an increase in that sort of activity, small stablecoin transactions in countries like this? Because obviously you run one of the most popular wallets on the planet.

Yeah, so we do have the biggest mobile wallet out there. And in fact, what I find very, very interesting is that the majority of the active wallet that we have are extremely small amounts in terms of the volume. So I'm actually proud on that. It means that what we're serving are actually the fringe, like the normal retail people now with a deep pocket in the US, all about getting the hype for investment purposes. So there is a lot about USDT from my CS tickets. People are always asking about why is the USDT stock in certain part of the blockchains. So that kind of shows me, that's a data point that shows me that stablecoin, USD stablecoin plays such an

important role for those normal day small pocket users for very practical reasons, and most likely is for their unbanked reasons or stability. And what I'm thinking about the US dollar weaponization, when Nolan talks about, I think the US again needs to think about it with a much more long termterm and broader view. Let me just throw an extreme idea there. Wouldn't it be great for everyone on Earth to just hold the US dollar? That essentially makes the US dollar the most powerful thing that a government TBO or short-term debt could ever possibly have. Because the world, everyone just desire to hold that for u.s government um and balancing that with okay i'm going to now exercise the control because i'm

now the issuer of this i don't want anybody that potentially could be political reasons don't have the access to it but how how how will the most powerful government wants to balance between these two because Because your assets are desirable for day-to-day normal people. And those are the ones that are also going to influence some of the political decisions in their own local countries. So how to play the balances between these two? It could be leveraged through CBDC, but USD stablecoin, private USD stablecoin has already played a tremendous role to democratize the US dollars around the world. That actually, from my perspective, helps out with the US inflation,

right? Because if you contain a one country's dollar bill just within your own country, the inflation is going to off the roof as you print more money. But as more people around the world hold it, it's supposed to help with also the political agenda or economic agenda of containing the inflation um so there's a lot of things to play out here there's a lot of day-to-day people's needs as what we have seen from our our perspective and tying back to our earlier questions is that what would be the best loan for game for the U.S. government and society and economy to consider about the whole picture, about private U.S. stablecoin, public CBDC, and how the distribution will work out. Hi there. I would love to hear what you're seeing at the exchange,

because we've sort of seen net outflows from exchanges into custodial wallets, at least, and it's funny, we talked right before the FTX collapse, so I don't really know. I knew what happened after Celsius and Voyager and all of those, but we've never really discussed that movement after FTX. But are you seeing, A, are you seeing any outflows from the exchange to self-custody, which I imagine you guys would encourage to a degree. But B, are you also seeing people use their exchange accounts for small transactions? Last time I spoke with CZ, he said the majority of Binance users are not trading. They make no

money on them. Those are just people in foreign countries using Binance as a wallet, right? So are you seeing those kinds of things as well? Less so. I think for us, we are a brand OKEx is known for its trading engine. And so the behavior on our side is primarily trading. In the last two weeks, I think we saw a huge uptick in people settling into USDT. But more coincidentally, USDC ended up rising to the top. So that was an interesting behavior we definitely noticed on the platform. Now, traders, oftentimes even retail investors on our platform can be erratic based on the market condition. So you saw settlement flow into USDC and stables. But then suddenly as the market started to rip on the Bitcoin side,

you saw trades begin to happen for the primary asset, Bitcoin and Ethereum. So that's been really interesting. Now, we do have a self-hosted wallet within OKEx. So with Binance, Binance as Owen Leeds Trust these are two separate apps with OKEx we have an exchange mode and then we have a web3 self-hosted mode all in one so we allow people to go back and forth and certainly encourage that behavior because the idea is that when you want to trade when you want to interact with the real world you you go into a CeFi environment, you go trade and interact and do whatever you want to do. And at the end of the day, you settle into a self-hosted wallet and ideally a self-hosted wallet and a stable asset.

So you can avoid volatility on your positions. So that's sort of the behavior at least we're encouraging since last December when things started to get shaky. Interestingly, yeah, go ahead, please. Yeah, just to your question, after our conversation, FTX fell. It was a bear market. So usually in bear market, we will be seeing MAU decrease, no matter centralized exchange, decentralized water, because the space is just getting less active.

It was on that slow trajectory of the decreasing from what I see. And then with FTX, absolutely spiked. And a lot of people come to us also for a primary reason is for the users. I think in the world, it's very hard to find trust. People don't know like a lot of the research when you do like which wallet you trust or not, because the stake is going to be very high. So I think we are benefiting from it and the jury benefited a lot from it, from the cold storage and self custody perspective. So we kind of see that kind of a traffic share, our shaping. I will have to say though,

is that for people who are mostly the holders after a spike of the events the active level go down right because we're not expecting voters to to come come back use it every day um so i think that's that's okay that's rightfully so because if people use it for self-custody they're not going to do that very actively anyway um but something interesting i have seen, this is all public data that people can see that just on sensor tower data.ai all the time is that I still do find that those events happen. It does shake up people's concept about what do I trust? Who do I trust? Ultimately, we want people to trust themselves, right?

This space about trust, ultimately decentralized technology is supposed to be trustless. Then the trust that people should place on is themselves. Like, do they feel enabled, empowered, having the right knowledge toolkit to make the right decision that they can no matter it's trading on centralized exchanges, on decentralized exchanges, holding NFT, using that for utilities purposes? It's people's own choice. And so far we have seen that concept getting shaken up more and more people find value in it due to the fall of the events and people getting more educated that otherwise previously

they wouldn't wrap their mind around. So we've seen that the active levels of decentralized apps remain stable or the decrease is way less in the bearish market compared to centralized platforms across the spectrum. What you've touched on there, Owen, is one of the big innovations of crypto markets more broadly and something that traditional investors, mainstream investors have a hard time getting their heads around. And that is the choice that we're offered. You mentioned trust. We're

offered a choice of trust. We can trust CeFi, we can trust DeFi, we can trust a selfless wallet, we can trust ourselves to know where our keys are, etc. We choose who we trust, just as we choose how we acquire, what we do with it afterwards. We don't even, I mean, Bitcoin, for instance, has many different potential use cases. We choose what we do with it, whereas no one's ever been able to do that with traditional investments before this is a rethinking of what markets even should be which i find totally fascinating and on another another thread you mentioned there owen the the reshuffling of wallets and you mentioned this too hydra reshuffling off of exchanges and it's wreaking havoc with on-chain data analysis i can

say this is someone that used to pay a lot of attention to Bitcoin data on chain to see what activity was doing. Now we can't really determine anything from the uptick in the number of address holders because they could have come from CeFi in that big exodus. We can't read and justify extrapolating information about whales because they're probably spreading their holdings now for insurance reasons. This has definitely put a dent in the analyst's toolbox for sure. Yeah, I mean, whales probably spreading their holdings now for insurance reasons this is definitely put a dent in the analyst's toolbox for sure yeah i mean whales are spreading their money around on uh in banks as well right this is not now a crypto problem at all but then you see people say oh the whales are selling no they're not selling they're redistributing yeah it's almost, you know, everyone from retail to traders, we're all scrambling to find where, what can we trust? You know, you had the downfall of Three Arrows, Luna.

Like, you know, last year, it's just been like this series of events where people are like, okay, where do I park here? Do I park over here? Oh, I can maybe park in the banks. Oh, shit, I can't. You know, so it's been sort of this scramble. And I think the world is learning a lot about what you can trust and what you cannot. And hopefully, we're all getting seasoned and programmed to think in a better way and to de-risk ourselves, because the reality is, at least in the current market, you just

cannot trust one entity, one thing, one asset type. And we really have learned to question what safe means. I mean, safe exchanges, safe banks, and even the safest asset in the world, the US government bonds. I mean, you've seen the volatility in those assets recently off the charts and even more than during the financial crisis. So what does safe even mean? Safe is an asset that you can safeguard yourself that is not subject to the monetary politics of any third entity. And volatile as it may be, it doesn't make it unsafe. Yeah.

And I think especially at the current macroeconomic time, I think risk management becomes even the more important concept than anything else. Honestly, if someone, well, I'm not a good investor, but any investor, if they do really well, they will tell you risk management

is more important than just looking at the upsides. So funny enough is that we're talking about this as if the world just wake up for the whole concept. I think that's mostly for the developed world.

The developing world, the users that I have talked to in India, in Pakistan, in different parts, in Latin America, they've had to wrestle with the concept for a long time. They are living in a completely different world where the banks are probably not that trustworthy. The stability of their own local currency are not very trustworthy. So they have always been looking for what will be the alternative or diversifying solutions to help with them to get a sense of security for their hard-earned money. And then that's why also probably crypto and also self-custody grow way stronger

in those parts of the world from what i've seen than the development i echo that a hundred percent i think oftentimes people ask owen uh you know where are you seeing the the rise of adoption or what is sort of that inflection point for any culture or economy or or market to to start to accelerate their adoption of crypto. And I think it's primarily hyperinflation, but also where people don't have a choice on where they're going to park their money. And, you know, you brought up Pakistan. I actually coincidentally grew up in Pakistan and came to the US, you know, pretty late as an international student. And I still recall the challenge my parents had to go through trying to figure out where they custody their value.

And the recollection I have is that most of the value my parents would convert into gold and keep gold. And then as times, you know, sort of evolved, the race was who can get the value out of Pakistan as quickly as possible, because it's almost impossible to get your value out of Pakistan as quickly as possible, because it's almost impossible to get your value out of Pakistan. So oftentimes where we see an accelerated adoption of crypto or self-custody is in those markets. And I think that's about to happen in the United States with what's happening with banks. I think it's going to accelerate the desire for people to learn and invest and figure out what this can provide to them as a safeguard. And even going beyond the storage of or the store of value thesis that you're pulling on there, Haider, there's the economic activity, the right to make a living,

the right to innovate and to build businesses, which in the United States is part of its DNA and what the SEC is effectively trying to do is dampen the innovation in the United States is part of its DNA. And what the SEC is effectively trying to do is dampen the innovation that the United States has always prided itself on. But even going beyond the developed world borders that you mentioned, Nigeria, you probably remember, I think it was a couple of years ago, the central bank, it put out a communique implying that it was banning cryptocurrencies. It actually wasn't, but it sounded like it was from the wording. There were riots on the streets in Lagos because of a number of young people, especially, who were making money day trading. Whether you can argue that's a profitable or worthwhile

activity or not, that's irrelevant. The fact that it was not illegal and they were making a living doing that when they couldn't really easily make a living doing pretty much anything else. And here comes some very old people in the central bank, I'm quoting here, old people in the central bank telling me, I here, old people in the central bank telling me I can't do that anymore. It became a touch point, the paper that lights up super fast, became a touch point for many people.

There were actually riots in the streets and the central bank was asked to walk back their statement by the SEC of the country, funnily enough. So this is just a glimpse, I think, of the political pressure that we're gonna be getting, as you said, Haider, not just in the United States, not just pretty much everywhere. So it's interesting that you brought up that Nigeria riot situation. What went into my mind is a Uber example. I think all of us have heard of news when the Uber, the heling services around

the world were expanding, of course, you also face a political pressure. It's not like a central level, but it's at a municipal level, local level. Sometimes it could be even more violent. It depends on which part of the world. And I think the power that maybe as an industry that we should think deeper is that if we provide a strong enough of a value, people would love to fight for it just like they would love to fight for to keeping uber because it changes their life

in the way how they travel and fighting for fighting for liberty i'm sorry sorry i didn't need to interrupt fighting for liberty is something that has driven the western civilization forward over centuries this isn't something that we're going to give up lightly and fighting for liberty especially when it comes to our choice in the type of assets that we hold in the type of legal business activities we engage in is something that's certainly not going away it's it's part of the the human spirit it's interesting what you've described in emerging nations now sounds like it could become a playbook or a glimpse into the future of what's actually coming for the developed world, which is not something I would have necessarily expected. Bitcoiners may have been saying that since 2010, but it's kind

of strange to see it playing out to some degree at this point. But could we see now that trust moving? I mean, Haider, you talked about it, right? The money first went to gold, then it left Pakistan. Well, that's a funnel, right? Eventually, there's nowhere left to put your money. It was going to be what? The U.S. banks? Now people are losing trust in that. Swiss banks, Credit Suisse, I mean, where's left now to put your money as everybody flees to a new place for safety or a new store of value or any of that, if you can't even put your money in a U.S. bank. And then I guess the next question there is, is that why we're seeing Bitcoin rise now? Or is this just traders trading? Any of you can jump in,

but it's really interesting to me that there's very much nowhere left to go. It's, in my opinion, both. And this is something that I focus on pretty nowhere left to go it's uh in my opinion both this is something that i focus on pretty much every day what's the story behind the recent moves in the macro and the crypto markets and what i've been seeing recently when it comes to bitcoin it's been macro driven very much but also crypto driven because why bitcoin are not others well bitcoin is the one that is the hard cap store of value but macro driven because Bitcoin also is the most sensitive asset to shifts in liquidity sentiment, the most because it is a risk asset, because it doesn't have to be in portfolios, because it is 24-7, 365, but also especially because it doesn't have cash flows that can be debased by higher interest

rates. It doesn't have fixed value. It is the most sensitive uh assets to shifts in liquidity sentiment which arguably are tightening right now and why is bitcoin not falling when by all macro reasoning it should be because of the other thesis there is also the accumulation as a longer term store of value that we've seen continue throughout last year and start to pick up now because things are getting crispy, shall we say, in the financial landscape. So I think it's interesting that when the US banks fell, that was the first time that I have seen the Bitcoin pricing depict from the stock market.

I think that's a historical moment that Bitcoin's original value proposition or the vision of the value proposition starts to show, ironically or probably not surprisingly, in a similar context that it's born. It was born out of the context of 2008 in response to potential distrust of the centralized system, especially the banking system and the printing of the money. And history repeats after 14, 15 years, then Bitcoin's original thesis go back to its roots rather than seeing Bitcoin as a kind of speculation crypto assets bitcoin is bitcoin itself for why it existed and i think this is a very powerful kind of a reaching to your self-actualization for bitcoin moment and it means that the the world at least

the markets um are starting to realize that and see this asset not just like this is an ultra risky crypto asset, even riskier than stock. But it is different now. And funny enough, anecdotally, my parents asked me that, oh, is the banks OK? Should I buy some Bitcoin? My parents are 60 year old right when they start to ask that question it means that there is something that does take the world the baby boomer generation starts to understand the value proposition of the original crypto bitcoin uh in the new light and that is no longer potentially significantly influenced by the macro.

In fact, it might be the opposite to hedge against the macro. It starts to play the role of gold, right? We've been calling it digital gold for ages. Then it starts to make the world does see it look like a gold. And I think that is a watershed moment. It's so important to point out.

I mean, the Genesis block, Satoshi Nakamoto inscribed chancellor on the brink of a second bailout, right? And this is the second bailout. It was born of the first and this is the second. So if ever there was a time to really believe the narrative, this would be it. I had Dave Weisberger on the show on Monday and he said, if Bitcoin didn't exist, gold would be $2,500 today. And I thought that that was a really interesting point, bit hyperbolic, but an interesting point that maybe we really are seeing people fly here. I just want to add one more point. I spoke with Saylor on Tuesday and I asked him this exact question, why is it going

up? And I was surprised being such a maxi that he is, that he said, I think it's just first crypto people moving out of altcoins and stablecoins into Bitcoin. And it's not yet the mainstream viewing it as a digital store of value. Haider, you're nodding your head, so you probably agree. Look, I can't conclude sitting here today whether it's the behavior from new retail coming in or its existing traders trading the current markets and the volatility. It's perhaps a mix of both, but I cannot conclude today because I don't think we've seen those trades close to determine if they're longtime hodlers or if they were opening short-term positions on the platform,

because short-term positions can be a day trade, but it can also be a position that remains open within 30 days. So I'm not sure yet. But what's interesting is, I'm sure we all know Michael Burry. Why did he tweet out something? You know, I think almost four weeks ago, I think the tweet was just one word like sell or something. Sell off. Sell. Something like that. Yeah. Sell everything. Sell everything or whatever it is and you know of course i'm a parent and we we diversify our risk and yes i am invested in the traditional markets as well and you know we my wife and i we we we think about both worlds uh quite pragmatically and i think what was interesting oh and in our case at least least our portfolio looked like it was very closely pegged to the Bitcoin markets.

And of course, that is so dependent on what you have in your basket. We have mostly tech stocks. And when the news around banks came in, the markets were sort of flat. But then come Monday, when the bailout was confirmed, the equities market in the United States started to rip up along with Bitcoin. So it was really interesting. I would open my Fidelity portfolio. That's looking great. My OKEx portfolio is looking great.

I was like, that's very interesting. But to me personally, I am cautious right now. I feel like until we are able to conclude where this behavior is coming from, it feels very short term. You're right. I totally agree with you. It's also run up very fast. And whenever anything runs up fast, there's generally a correction. Uncertainty is off the charts now in pretty much all asset classes, which is no doubt going to influence. And most of the volume has been from traders, from institutionals coming in as well. We can see this just in the sharp increase in spot volumes. Spot volumes can be manipulated, but these are from trusted exchanges. Spot volumes has shot up since the beginning of the year. Even during March, it has shot up even more and is now roughly where it was in May last year, which was an extraordinary month, as you may remember. So this is institutional interest.

There's no way the retail force is gathering enough steam for that yet. They tend to come in later on in the cycle anyway on that. This is more of the professionals and the institutionals coming in. And the reasons are mixed. Part of it is what we've been talking about, the macro story, and then, of course, the store of the alternative insurance asset. I like to call it an insurance asset story. But then you simply have the momentum traders, those who don't really care about the Bitcoin story. But where's the money going to go? I might as well get in ahead of the rush.

So there's a lot going on there. I don't buy the thesis yet that this is rotation from altcoins into bitcoin because while bitcoin has outperformed the others haven't done terribly and the volumes the market caps haven't declined very much which you would expect we would see if there was a notable rotation uh still surprised that eth has underperformed so much especially given the upcoming upgrade and the the different type of narrative that it has, the technological progress more like, but that's again perhaps a regulatory question. It has some regulatory uncertainty over it that Bitcoin doesn't.

But this is a new wave of sentiment that I've been seeing since January, macro driven at first now with the insurance asset thesis. And this is, you're probably right, you're going to take a breather, but we also have the halving coming up next year. And so just simply historical timing-wise, roundabout now is when it starts to get ready for that. One can argue that the next halving is going to be totally different, different market, different kind of adjustment. But still, I think it's interesting. You could literally ignore everything that's happened in macro, in the news, everywhere, open a chart of the halving cycles, and it's exactly the same as the last two.

You could have gone to sleep and hibernated and not even paid attention to bank collapses or hyperinflation or any of it, and you still have that. Noel, to your point, I'm not that surprised that ETH hasn't moved, only from, again, looking at last cycles and the way that assets do churn within. If it is traders, you just get that Bitcoin FOMO, and then when it calms down as Hydra retraces, then I bet we'll see a rotation in Ethereum. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

I've seen it so many times in the past. And the U.S. customer, unless you're on Coinbase, I believe most other U.S.-based platforms, their fiat rails are shut down. So you have, unless you're a Coinbase customer, you're kind of out of luck. You can't really use, unless you, you know, perhaps use a credit card and the credit card fees are really high and anyone sensible would probably not do that with a large order. Yeah, and going back to what we were talking about earlier, China coming back in, according to data from the blocks dashboard, which I look at every morning, 85% of spot volume happens in Asia. China's implicit support as well, that's not insignificant. And that could well be one of the key drivers we see over coming months, especially as the Chinese are.

China is no doubt watching the U.S. hostility and thinking, hmm, what they don't like, I should probably take a closer look at. I can say anecdotally, I've shared this here before. Last weekend, I was going on vacation and I saw Silvergate happening and then I saw Silicon Valley and I knew, I assumed that Circle had some exposure. And even I flew to safety and sold a bunch of my USDC into Bitcoin that morning right before the DPEG happened. I mean, a bit of that's a trade. I was like, Bitcoin's 19 grand. I think things look pretty good here. But most of it was literally me viewing Bitcoin as the safe asset,

which goes back to, Noelle, what you said before. Yes, it's about trust, but safety may be our new narrative because you don't even care if it goes up and down. You just want to know it's not going to disappear. Like there was a moment there where the world thought, oh, what if USDC just disappears and it goes to zero? Like it's not going to disappear like there was a moment there where the world thought no what if usd just disappears and it goes to zero like it wasn't going to it's not ust but there's people who you know think that but you know what if my bank account is shut down and i

don't get that money back for and i get 70 of it back in two years right so i mean i did it so extraordinary what you just said scott i, just think who would have thought, again, would this be on your bingo card? You'd be selling a stable Bitcoin into Bitcoin for safety? It was my first instinct. Yeah, that's actually what the majority of the developing countries do, is that they sell their fiat currency into a lot of more stable assets, Bitcoin, to them.

So it's just that right now i think in the west we starts to understand again like this is this is a new paradigm and then people starts to understand differently about the world that we're living right now yeah and question what safe means but if you're living in a country with hyperinflation, you can clearly see that, you know, your buying power is averse. Bitcoin especially is down ninety nine point nine percent. Yeah. Like whatever it is, Saylor loves to tweet those things. You know, if you live in Argentina, you're by, you know, the peso versus Bitcoin. The chart is absolutely astounding. Right.

And so we all obviously think about it in dollars, but what happens when the dollar starts to lose value? If, I mean, Noelle, you're the queen of this. I mean, are we really at a risk right now? Are we at a risk right now of actually seeing dollar hyperinflation? No, I don't think we are. Apology and get them on here. I would take Balaji's bet for sure, but not going to do that.

No, we're not. But when you say dollar lose value, it's always lose value against what? If it's losing value, it's losing value against a basket of other currencies. And so the risk is just shifting. Risk never goes away. It just moves. And when it comes down, that benefits other countries, gives them more breathing room when it comes to their dollar-based debt. That creates other strains in the system, etc.,

etc. Bitcoin, funnily enough, has been very inversely correlated to dollar moves for the past two years. I've been watching this quite closely. And that's starting to break down now also. The correlations that Ilhan mentioned earlier about Bitcoin versus the stock indices have been very highly correlated the past couple of years, not so much anymore. A correlation with gold

is increasing which comes back to the safe Haven narrative that we've been talking about of course the markets are crazy and this could be entirely coincidental I mean the correlation to stock market now I think on a rolling 40-day basis is sub 0.2 I mean utterly uncorrelated and it was up to 0.8 I think at the peak sort of last year when they were really highly correlated. But to your point, it feels like it just happened. But I think it really started happening last summer. If you look the deep peg in correlation, the only problem was Bitcoin all summer was going sideways and extremely boring while the stock market was volatile. So it didn't feel like it was deep peg. And then we certainly saw with the FTX black swan that there was no correlation, but not to our benefit.

Right. But is this I mean, is this it? Are we decorrelated? Bitcoin can live in its own free market and exist or we just, you know, something's going to happen. And in six months, we're going to be talking about a point eight correlation again. Comes down to rates expectations. Bitcoin became highly correlated when rates expectations started changing. It's going to come down to that because, again, the crypto market is big and we are used to focusing on crypto volumes, crypto flows. But the actual traditional financial market is massive. And if even a percentage of that decides to come into crypto, that's going to blow volumes off of the charts. And that will come down to rates expectations. If easing is on the board, then we're back into a risk on. And as I said

before, Bitcoin is the most sensitive asset that a greater percentage of institutions is more familiar with now. And many of them are not going to want to be caught out a second, missing it a second time. So I think the next run up is going to be more volatile, more violent even, I can say, than the previous one, simply because there's been a lot of holding going on. There's 50 percent of Bitcoin hasn't moved in over a year. They're presumably not going to be selling until prices are much higher. And the volume of money that could be coming in trying to get a piece of this insurance asset that is also risk on is probably going to dwarf the capacity at the moment so this is again not going to happen right away because there's so

much uncertainty but once we do get signs that there are rate cuts coming then I think the narrative is going to shift very quickly back to Bitcoin is a macro asset and correlations will spike again correlations will spike but it'll be high beta and go up, you know, seven times as much as the stocks. You don't have to look very far back, right? I mean, March 2020, everything bottomed. Everybody is so excited that the stock market doubled from there while Bitcoin casually went up 17 times from under 4,000 to 69,000. Exactly, exactly. And the Bitcoin as a macro asset correlated with stocks was generally uttered by people who were saying that what the stock market does, Bitcoin will do. And therefore, you know, it's not even its own particular asset class. But I disagree with that. I think the correlations were not causational.

They were coincidental. And it was Bitcoin doing things that happened to coincide with what the stock market was doing because of a similar narrative thread. But this time, yes, we'll see a similar narrative thread again, but so much else going on as well. Correlations are definitely not the full picture. We've got about three minutes left. So Haider, Eowyn, please give your sort of take on this and then we'll have to unfortunately go. Well, look, I agree with Noel and all I'll say is this time when easing if easing was to occur i'm going to be a little more bullish with my own strategy which i miss certainly so you know i'm i'm i'm watching very carefully yeah i think for for me it seems that i'm we're working on a software part of the world i'm not going to give an investment advice because I suck at it.

I would just say that again, always remind people to be aware of the risks that Noel has been emphasizing all along is no matter you're looking at the upside, always consider what's the downside. And then ultimately, you know, I just want my team to do a good job to give people a peace of mind that technology for them to make the choice that they can. I mean, how funny will it be, honestly, if in, you know, a year and a half, we're looking back, and this was the bottom, and it was just another Bitcoin 75% retrace, and the halving cycle and

prices are over $100,000. Everyone goes back and says it was so obvious right i mean it really it really could be as simple as that which just blows my mind when you sort of look at that i i want to thank all three of you for your uh incredible perspective and for sharing your time i can see in the comments that everybody uh truly truly enjoyed it so i'd love to have all three of you back. Noelle, your first time. So we have to make that two, three, four, five, five times, of course, is really a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, all of you, everybody. Of course, I'll be back tomorrow on Fridays at 930 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. We do the weekend review of news. I'm going to have to start studying now. I don't even know how I'm going to be able to start that with everything that's happened this week. But I will try to be up to the challenge, everybody. Thank you so much, Noel, Owen, and Heider.

It's been really awesome. Bye, everyone. Thanks so much, everyone. Great meeting you guys. Let's go.