The Wolf Of All Streets - Big Institutions Prepare To Deploy $$$ Billions Into Crypto As SEC Goes To War! | Cheds + Alfred

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

I am joined by my favorite guests: Mike Alfred and Big Cheds!  9:00-9:40 Mike Alfred 9:40-10 am EST Market update from Big Cheds Follow guests: - Mike Alfred https://twitter.com/mikealfred - Big Cheds https://twitter.com/BigCheds  ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►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/   ►►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.

You may remember that in November, right after the FTX collapse, I sent a tweet that said, Wall Street is going to buy our entire industry for pennies on the dollar. Watch. Or something to that effect. And it's an idea that I've been sharing and talking about for even years before, that eventually we would see pushback from the United States government opening the door for the Wall Street incumbents. If you saw me on Yahoo Finance, I talked about this quite a bit. Well, it's all happening right in front of our eyes. EDX markets going into business. That's the exchange that's owned in conjunction by Fidelity, Citadel, right? I mean, the biggest names in the space and Charles Schwab. Steezy just tweeted that Deutsche Bank has applied for a crypto asset license. BlackRock

applying for an ETF. It's becoming very clear. They're not trying to kill the crypto industry in the United States. They're trying to kill the incumbents. They can hand it over to their Wall Street cronies. We're going to talk about this. I've got Mike Alford on for the first half to talk about everything happening with BlackRock, GBTC, Grayscale, Fidelity rumors. And then we're going to go on the back half, as you know, with the new format, talk to Big Cheds about some trading ideas that he has. It's going to be a massive show. You guys do not want to miss this. Let's go. What is up, everybody i am scott melker also known as the wolf of all streets before we get started please subscribe to the channel and drop kick that like button just smack your keyboard

all the way across the room smash it against the wall and send mike alfred the bill don't send the bill to me send Send it to Mike. Guys, as I said, very clear what's happening in the United States at this point, a wholesale takeover of the crypto industry by Wall Street and friends. Now, we know that they're being assisted, obviously, by the government with the widespread crypto crackdown by Gary Gensler and his cronies and friends. But it's becoming a true question as to whether Gary Gensler has massively overreached his way out over his skis and potentially could be in violation of the law with this massive overreach that we are seeing. But we'll get into that in a minute. We'll get into that in a minute. I just want to say that no matter what you think about this Wall Street takeover of crypto,

I hate it. In theory, it's bullish for the asset class, at least certainly for Bitcoin and anything else that has not been deemed a security. We can fight all day about how evil BlackRock is, and they probably are, certainly how evil the Citadels and JP Morgans and Deutsche Bank comes in, and JP Morgan comes in, and Fidelity quintuples down on the space because they've already doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down, there's no question that this gives the stamp of approval to the asset class for American investors. Whether that's just accredited investors or institutions remains to be seen. But as I said, it's very clear right now, this is not an attack to kill it. It is an attack to control it. And I think that that is very, very clear and a very important nuance. Now, before Mike jumps in, I want to talk about a

few ideas here. We're going to obviously talk of the ETF and the investing side of it and what it means to death. But we're seeing quite a bit of pushback now against Gensler at all. Former SEC advisor, legal doctrine could end Gensler's crypto crackdown. Talking about the major questions doctrine. This is from JW Ver verrett who was actually a advisor to gensler and of course because this happened today we decided to get him on crypto town hall so the actual advisor jw verrett or verrett we'll see how it's pronounced is going to come on to crypto town hall by twitter spaces at 10 15 a.m eastern standard time discuss this. But what is the major questions doctrine that might be in violation here? The major questions doctrine is a legal doctrine that challenges the authority of regulatory agencies and could potentially put an end to SEC Chairman

Gary Gensler's crypto crackdown. So how does this matter for the SEC regulatory action in the crypto space? The major questions doctrine could challenge the SEC's reach and authority in regulating digital assets that operate on decentralized blockchains. Now, we might not get a lot of clarity on this until Coinbase and Binance US, but there is major legal precedent here for the government and legislators to take control when a regulator or regulatory agency pushes too hard i think that gensler has gone too far and we are going to see him fired now listen we try not to conjecture to go down the road of tin hat theories too much uh and adam cochran has broken a lot of great news but also has uh spread some fud at times it ended up not being true but adam cochran here heard from a friend yeah i don't really like news that starts with heard from a friend but we do it ended up not being true. But Adam Cochran here heard from a friend. Yeah.

I don't really like news that starts with heard from a friend, but we do it quite a bit. Heard from a friend that the rumors in the DC fundraising circles are that the Biden team wants to shake up some chairs, cabinet positions in the finance sector to take the heat from the economy before the next election. Yellen tops the list. No surprises there. Dumb and dumber haircut is so 90s. But apparently,

plenty of big ticket donors have mentioned Gensler as well. Oh, you don't say. Even ones who agreed with his stance on crypto are embarrassed by his approach. Starting to look like Warren, Yellen, and Gensler brought down the hammer too hard for even their own party. We know that, guys. The anti-crypto army is a very small part of the Democratic side of the aisle. There are plenty of Democrats who love this industry. They just aren't talking about it right now because Lizzie Warren is really scary. I would have guessed both Powell or Yellen would be on the chopping block. I think that actually people view Powell as doing pretty well, I hate to say. But Gensler's lack of professionalism is rubbing his own party the wrong way, and so tides are turning. If we keep highlighting the absurdity of his approach,

he may get reined in. Of course, we always get these types of rumors and strategy talks before a re-election, so hard to say what weight it holds, but it's clear that their most connected donors are starting to talk. Yeah, there's very widespread news that people don't like Gary Gensler, including those who work for him. Many people have quit. Lots of pushback. He's disliked. He's Elizabeth Warren's kind of little bitch boy.

Bring out the gimp. Pulp fiction, you guys. Bring out the gimp and you do the fingers. So yeah, this could end really badly for Gary. So what i want to say to you before we uh you know bring on mike whenever he shows up over here is that uh keep tweeting fire gary gensler right even if that only has a very small effect when that's trending on twitter people notice call your senator call your congressman have chat gpt write you a letter

that says i think that the SEC has massively overreached and I am a single issue voter and will only be voting on crypto. You get rid of Gary Gensler, I'll vote for you. Do that. It works. You'd be surprised. But now we're going to obviously dig back into BlackRock.

I'm going to bring on Mike Alfred now since I see him here waiting in the wings. What's up, Manny? We got you up bright and early today. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's rough. I don't know what it is about getting up this early, but it is what it is. I'm all up at that time. Okay. So listen, you jumped on spaces yesterday. You had some incredible points, but I want to dive deeper into this with you, obviously. So the news of the week, the only thing we can talk about is BlackRock and the Bitcoin ETF.

Of course, we take the hyperbolic approach from BlockWorks here. It says the wolf enters the hen house, and that's based on Mark Yusko's quotes. I have to give Yusko credit. He's been saying for years there will be no ETF until BlackRock comes in and asks for one, and that literally happened. So I don't know if it was a crystal ball. He said it was just too obvious. But regardless of your thoughts on BlackRock, how big is this for Bitcoin specifically? Well, it's put a lot of things into play, certainly. So irrespective of whether it gets approved, I see a bid under Bitcoin in the last few days that I haven't seen in a while. There's a lot of rumors about other asset managers like Fidelity getting involved

here. There's potential movement at Grayscale, at GBTC. I own a lot of GBTC in part because I have a fund that has limitations on how much spot Bitcoin that I can hold with the prime broker. So people are always giving me a hard time. Why do you own so much GBTC? It's like, well, if I could find a prime that focused on equities, that would allow me to hold an unlimited amount of spot Bitcoin, then it wouldn't be an issue. But it turns out there's still structural reasons why people hold it. So I think BlackRock making a move here, even if it's not successful immediately, puts a lot of other things in play like one of the things that i'm imagining happen right now is fidelity potentially negotiating with dcg and barry to to potentially like back channel in a sense with the stc is something you kind of see in biotech for example when like a larger biopharma buys a smaller biotech, like that larger firm

sometimes will buy the set of molecules before FDA approval because they have enough confidence that it will be FDA approved and they want to buy it essentially beforehand. I could see a scenario where Fidelity sort of gets through a back channel, like sort of get a blessing that, look, we will settle with Grayscale, right. The, the outstanding lawsuit, if fidelity takes over that trust and, and promises to do the same things that BlackRock is doing. So we don't know for sure what's going to happen here yet. It's possible that BlackRock doesn't get approval in the short term, but it's still a very interesting set of things that it put into play yeah the fidelity side has been as far as i can tell rumor so far right we had on uh the guy who on on spaces yesterday actually

the guy who had tweeted you know hearing from sources unnamed of course that fidelity could make a play for grayscale which is what you just said and we'll be filing for the own etf and i'm literally like in the background talking to two people from Fidelity who say, well, you could talk to our PR team, but we've heard nothing about that. So we're kind of in that in-between of whether something like that is going to happen or not. But what we do know is that Fidelity has been the institution that's been the most committed to Bitcoin from the very early days. They've been mining since 2014 or 2015, have created products. They've had their own ETFf or was an etp but that was actually rejected in 2022 so not that long ago but they've been down this road before it would

make sense whether they're making a play in the background or not for them to double down once again right just seeing black rock's involvement here agreed i agree. And look, I don't think people should discount Fidelity at all. Fidelity has been a believer in Bitcoin for eight or nine years. Abby saw the sort of beauty of the system. She said, look, we should mine it first so that we can understand how Bitcoin works from first principles. So people who are like, oh, these big, you know, institutions from TradFi are coming into the space. It's like, no, actually Fidelity was here way before Binance, right?

Fidelity is a trusted firm with huge scale. It's been around for decades. As far as I know, it's never become insolvent, has never, you know, screwed screwed depositors coming co-mingling our funds and sending them to their uh to their shadowy head yeah i mean i think that's one of the funniest things about this is like you know blackrock starts to come and it's almost like if you saw death cab for cutie when there were seven people in a small room you know like a small dive bar and then all of a sudden they have thousands of fans there and it's almost annoying

to you because you believed in death cab when there was only seven people. And so I sense a little bit of that in the space. People are annoyed that BlackRock and Fidelity are active. And it's like, no, you were right. Bitcoin matters. That's why these firms are here. In fact, I would argue BlackRock and Fidelity are much less harmful to Bitcoin long-term than Binance, Crypto.com, Huobi, Celsius, FTX, BlockFi. You go down the list of all these firms that are not run in a transparent way, that don't have audits, that are offshore, that are basically shirking responsibility and avoiding regulation. And Fidelity and BlackRock are literally the exact opposite. They have tons of regulation, which is why they've never become insolvent

and they've never had an issue fulfilling customer obligations. So I actually think them coming to the space is healthy and makes the entire Bitcoin ecosystem more anti-fragile. I know that's super unpopular, but I don't really care because people have been dead wrong.

People have been dead wrong about Binance and about some of these other big crypto firms. And if anything, maybe these, like a BlackRock or Fidelity will get some of these bucket shop type crypto firms to grow up and actually professionalize. Yeah. I think the question is, can the adults in the room actually help facilitate the actual crypto incumbents improving their businesses and still being around? Or is this literally like napalm carpet bombing of the crypto industry to make way for those Wall Street firms? Because I agree in a perfect world where Coinbase exists and is compliant, which I think we all like Coinbase, right? So I don't think Coinbase and

Binance or Coinbase and FTX are the same thing, where we still have the Coinbases, but also have BlackRock. I would just hate to see it where it's only BlackRock, Schwab, J.B. Morgan, Fidelity, right, and Citadel, and we don't have any crypto native companies involved, when they're the ones who obviously built this industry. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a fear, a little like being an American 100 years ago and being worried about immigrants coming, right? Like it may have some basis in reality, like there may be some sort of bias amongst regulators

for the firms that they've already done business with, in a sense, right? The firms where they're hoping to get a job, right? From a regulatory capture standpoint, they're hoping to get a job after they leave the regulatory environment. They want to work at BlackRock, right? Or they want to work at Fidelity or they want to work at Goldman. But I don't think it's a systemic thing. I don't buy that conspiracy. I just think some of these big traditional firms are in some ways more trustworthy than most of the crypto

native firms out there. I put Coinbase aside because I actually agree with you. I think Coinbase is different qualitatively in a lot of ways than a lot of these other firms that have blown up. But I still think Fidelity is safer. If I had to pay a million dollars of my own money and I put it in a Bitcoin product at Fidelity or Coinbase, the honest truth is I'm going to put it at Fidelity, even though I think Coinbase is a better business than most of the other crypto native firms. I don't think that's a conspiracy. I think that's just a fact. If you have an interesting BlackRock's ETF proposal is to custody with Coinbase. Yeah.

Yeah. They had that partnership before. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think, look, Coinbase is one of the only crypto native firms that's been willing to do an audit and has done a full audit for years now. Since before, I think they went public. And so I have a lot of confidence that all the grayscale Bitcoin is there. And I have a lot of confidence that if BlackRock uses them as a custodian, that we won't have to worry too much. Now, the SEC may hound them for a while because they want them to register in a certain way. Coinbase may have to delist

a number of these securities that they didn't want to admit were securities. They may have to re-domicile offshore, although I think that's less likely if they're going to do this custody business with BlackRock for the big daddy US ETF, assuming that gets approved. But they do need to delist probably some of those securities, or they need to be a traditional securities broker and just hold themselves out for what they are and say, look, we sell Bitcoin and Ethereum,

and we also sell these digital securities, but then they need to have the same regulatory apparatus. Issuers need to file reports. All the things need to be disclosed to the buyers of those securities. But I think that can all be worked out. I think this is just the messy part between the Wild West and the civilized metropolis development that's sort of happening. And that may be painful to a lot of people in crypto, but it may be necessary. I mean, does that mean that we get a Coinbase that lists somewhere between four and 10 assets in their custody business because of their deal with BlackRock becomes the bigger side

and we basically just see a shift in Coinbase's strategy and importance? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I mean, again, if they just admit that they list hundreds of securities, there's nothing illegal about listing securities. They're just disclosure requirements. They're a process.

They're all security, but they're not going, but the SEC isn't going after those securities to register. So therefore, there's kind of this chicken and egg situation. Sure. Sure. That's what I mean by the messiness part, right? You come out of this period of where it's a wild west, where you could make a credible case if you're Coinbase that there is no regulatory pathway.

So therefore, we didn't do it. This litigation, all of this noise now sort of crystallizes the need to finalize it. This litigation, all of this noise now sort of crystallizes the need to finalize it. And Coinbase has a case to be made around the SEC being somewhat intransigent, not providing transparency into their thinking, their process. But I think that all gets worked out. That's sort of what I'm referring to. I think that all gets worked out over the next, call it 12 to 24 months. And if they want to list securities, they can list securities. Plenty of other people list securities. There are plenty of brokerage firms in the US that sell securities of companies that

are going to fail. Companies with terrible management, companies with bad balance sheets. But as long as they follow all the disclosure requirements, when they sell those securities, there's not a lot of risk for them. So I don't see why it has to be any different in crypto. I just want to bring up something quickly, because you kind of invoked crypto.com and people might have missed the news yesterday. Trading teams at crypto.com exchange raised conflict questions. We actually tried to get the author of this article. But basically basically this is yet another major exchange being accused

of counter-trading their own customers, right? This is the BitMEX model from back in the day, where you go out and exchange, you set your orders, they know where your orders are and they're market-making and counter-trading. So just another example potentially of that same systemic sort of bad behavior that you talked about. And this is the issue, right? These traditional firms, they have to disclose exactly what role they're playing, right? And so when you sign up with Fidelity or Schwab, you custody your assets with them and you trade with them as a broker, but they're not also the exchange, right? They're not also the clearinghouse. They're not also the market maker you're facing off with, whether you know it or not.

And some of that is just systemic related to the fact that crypto is so small and illiquid that these firms are trying to convince you there's real liquidity when there is no liquidity. Binance is no different. I've been saying this for a while, and it was very unpopular nine months ago, but I think people are realizing it's true now, that just like with FTX and Alameda, Binance's entire business model was predicated on Merit Peak and Sigma Chain and all of CZ's internal market makers to make markets in a way that creates the appearance of a vibrant liquid market and all these tokens that doesn't actually exist. And so the SEC has a case there, right? Because BlackRock and Fidelity and some of these other big US regulated firms,

they don't operate across those conflict of interest barriers, right? They say, look, we are your asset manager. We're going to charge you a fee and that's all we do. We're not also your custodian. We're not also the exchange. We're not also the market maker, right? We're not also the clearinghouse. In crypto, people are playing all these roles in part because they're filling a vacuum and in part, in part because they're filling a vacuum and in part, frankly, because they're pulling the wool over the consumer's eyes. They want people to believe there's real liquidity when in fact most of it is wash trading. And I think it's funny that CZ has a long background. He's actually,

the one thing that I think CZ is definitely an expert in, he's an expert wash trader. He's incredible at it. He was doing it at his previous employer. He's still doing it now at Binance. And so the SEC and the CFTC don't like that for good reason, because it's very dangerous for consumers who actually believe that volume is real when it's not. So we talked about the blurring of the lines of all of the different roles that these exchanges take on, which I think FTX really shined a bright light on. You can't be the custodian, clearinghouse, exchange, market maker, all on the same platform. This news was kind of small

when it was broken, I believe last November, that Schwab, Fidelity, and Citadel were coming together to launch EDX markets and exchange. As I mentioned, they're only going to focus apparently on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, because those are the four I think they view as commodities. But I think what's interesting here is, A, they're only going for institutions. So their pitch is, hey, you institutions who wanted to trade but don't trust Binance US and FTX come here. But the other side of it is this is completely non-custodian. I don't know if you've looked into this at all, but effectively it's me trading from my wallet to you trading in your wallet. It doesn't seem like there's a custodian at all. So not the exchange, but also not a third-party custodian.

It's basically a peer-to-peer transaction and it's a matching engine. So what do you think of this model? Because this is being championed by Fidelity by fidelity citadel schwab not not three small players well this has been one of the arguments that ethereum supporters have made against bitcoin historically that i think actually hits which is that ethereum has has allowed for the creation of all of these dexes uh you know starting with uniswap, that allow people to do more kind of trustless trading. And Bitcoin natively hasn't historically allowed for that. So you do need this type of infrastructure to be able to trade directly from your wallet. And so I think it could be interesting. I mean, to be honest, I haven't followed it closely yet. It sounds like it's been funded, but maybe it hasn't actually been built.

But given the heft of the firms involved, you can probably expect, assuming something ever gets launched, that it will get some adoption. essentially, splits their custody business between something like this and Coinbase over time to de-risk the strategy. But what I would say, Scott, at a very high level is that if you get a mega ETF, like a low cost, not risk-free, but very frictionless, run by BlackRock that gets scale. That's a huge win for Bitcoin globally, because it means literally every single person in the US in particular can now gain access to Bitcoin during market hours at a very low cost and in a brokerage account. And there are a lot more people who have brokerage accounts in the US than that have a Coinbase account. And that's why people bought GBTC, right? That was the only easy way for a long time. Retirement account. Yeah. So if you want Bitcoin in your retirement

account and you didn't have a self-directed IRA, that's the only way you could do it. So if it gets done, it's a huge deal. And again, even if the SEC doesn't immediately approve Grayscale or Fidelity doesn't buy Grayscale, et cetera, it the SEC doesn't immediately approve Grayscale or Fidelity doesn't buy Grayscale, et cetera, it puts a lot of pressure on Grayscale to adapt to that environment. And so one thing that would help close the NAV discount is if Barry and Michael over at Grayscale would lower the fees, which they could do right now. They could lower the fees, they could create a redemption mechanism, they could- But they don't have to.

And their economic incentives yeah the economic incentive is okay there's nothing coming in right uh we don't let it out we can collect our 2 and 20 or you know whatever the uh fee structure is and dcg isn't making money in a lot of other places that's true i i'm struggling to see where they're making enough uh money at all to cover you know the genesis situation i think foundry is a good business right but but it's it's not a big business relative to those so grayscale's the the golden goose and potentially salvation and so if if fidelity were to offer enough money that it cleans up the mess and allows DCG to continue to operate, kind of frees them from some of those liabilities, I wouldn't be surprised if they work out a deal, maybe a deal where DCG retains some minority ownership so they still have

some piece of the upside, but they get enough cash to essentially take out the Genesis problem and forestall any potential legal liability and bankruptcy risk there. So we'll see. I mean, I told you- It's supposed to be different businesses, which is why I laugh and I'm kind of giggling, but- Yeah, but this is what everybody did. I mean, everybody, FTX, Three Arrows, you go down the list, Binance, everybody has like hundreds of entities and everybody makes believe and pretends that they're really different companies, even though it's exact same people in each entity. They're literally just used to ring fence risk and legal liability and

basically create these firewalls where you can mess up really, really badly here and hopefully not have it bleed over into this other... Corporate structuring, it's an old art, right? It's not like something that they just came up with in crypto. But I think it's been abused to a point at this point where it's just enabling bad behavior. Look at Three Arrows. Three Arrows committed fraud. They lied to their lenders. They did all kinds of stuff. And those guys are still surfing. No sign that they're ever going to be held accountable. And part of it is that they have so many entities. It's really hard for anyone, even a very motivated person to get to the bottom

of what's going on with all these entities. Yeah. And the real head scratcher is that Grayscale is suing the SEC for the ability to take GBTC and convert it into an ETF, but a GBTC conversion to an ETF would destroy the very business we just described. Yeah, on one hand, Grayscale is done with an ETF without that fee structure, right? Because there will be massive competition to reduce fees with other ETFs being approved, and the discount and premiums will be zero. But that's always been the play has always been though to get enough scale that the fees can come down. What's unusual here is because of the intransigence of the SEC, this closed in trust

product, which was their regulatory arbitrage in a sense, right? Because they essentially have a closet ETF that they've had for years and no one else has really been able to do the same thing. And so they've had a virtual monopoly on this Bitcoin trust product. And I think the idea was always like, hey, we're going to convert to an ETF and lower the fees, but at that point we'll have 50 billion or a hundred billion in the product. And so it's a scale game. Look at iShares. Look at BlackRock's ETF business or look at Vanguard's ETF business. These are huge scale businesses with really low fees. Some of the products have two bips, three bips, five bips, and fees, but they have massive scale. That was the play here. That play got disrupted and interrupted. But in the meantime, since nobody else can do it, they're still collecting their 2% on effectively $14 or $15 billion. And so if you were in the

same situation, Scott, I'm telling you, you'd do exactly the same thing. You'd fight for the brand and you'd want to keep the business alive, but you'd also wouldn't stop taking the cashflow if customers are willing to continue to provide financing in a sense. Yeah, they're just stuck in the middle of not enough volume to make the money as an ETF and obviously having a somewhat broken product on the other side. I don't even know if you even saw this today, but CZ tweeted Deutsche Bank applies for digital asset license. Yeah, I saw. And these guys, I mean, we're going to see every name, right? It's ubiquitous.

It's like the charts of Americans' usage of refrigerators and washing machines. It starts slow at the beginning, and then it just goes parabolic, and then it goes to 100%. Because if a washing machine is a better way to wash clothes or a refrigerator is a better way to keep your milk from spoiling, everybody's going to do it. And so Bitcoin, for example, has these systemic advantages. It's just better at what it does than anything else. And so no matter how much noise there is, volatility along the path of adoption, it's sort of irrelevant

because we're going to 100% adoption, right, over time. And if that's the case, then yes, every single firm over the next 5, 10, 15 years will have an announcement about what they're doing in Bitcoin. Yeah, I agree. I don't even think it'll take that long. I think they're going to all pile in now

because they see that the door is open and this is their opportunity. Do you think that there's a realistic chance that an ETF gets approved with this current regulatory regime? I mean, do you think that that's part of the plan? There's a lot of conjecture, but I mean, does BlackRock, who's 575-1 on approvals for ETFs, do they apply for this just to get in line or do they know something and think that they have a very, very good shot of getting approved? I mean, I wish I knew the answer perfectly. I think we'll learn more from the market response. I think the market just opened three minutes ago. I'm very curious to see how GBTC trades today and this week. As I said in spaces yesterday, I think you can learn a lot from tracking that discount, also tracking the discount of GBTC relative to ETH, which is their Ethereum trust. We'll tell you a little

bit about what might be going on under the surface to the extent at which that NAB discount starts to close. Then you might start to think that perhaps savvy market participants and people who are in these conversations maybe know about what BlackRock's real strategy is here. My initial gut reaction, but without doing a ton of analysis, is that I don't see it getting approved very quickly just because the SEC is locked in a philosophical battle of sorts and a political battle of sorts with the entire industry. And so I don't see them just fast tracking the BlackRock product without a lot of discussion. And so that could be wrong and it gets approved immediately. And that would be huge for Bitcoin, but it's- In other words, they'd have a lot of explaining to do to all the other 22 who have

been in line and rejected this entire time to prove that it's materially different. Right. And it's also almost never that easy. So I would expect it... Yeah, their previous record aside, I would expect it to take maybe a little longer than the market thinks. But again, instead of trying to make a call on that, I'm just going to watch the trading of a couple of different things that I use as my proprietary indicators. And I will have a pretty good read on that soon based on the way some of these things trade. I mean, you mentioned at the beginning, and we're going to transition in a few minutes over to Cheds and talking about some trading, but you, I don't know the exact numbers, but I know that you tweeted and mentioned on Spaces, you held about 100,000 shares of GBTC and you upped that in the last week or two

to well over 200,000, right? So you mentioned a lot of that has to do with prime brokerage and your ability to own spot. But I think if we're being honest, a lot of that has to do with it's like buying Bitcoin, but also getting the benefit of that discount closing, right? So going from 40 something percent to 36% in a matter of days.

Do you think that, how far can that go on this black rock news the discount well just the news of them filing it may not move further that's why again i'll be watching it closely because if it continues to compress then that would lead you to believe that there's that there's more going on here right and again like the the major things that could change things are are if blackrock actually looks like it's going to get approved or does get approved of course that would change everything quite quickly there should be news related to the appeals court ruling which i think is going to go in grayscale's favor because if you i listened to the entire you know last conversation between

those three judges and the sec and grayscale lawyers. It's just hard to leave that conversation thinking that the SEC has a leg to stand on. And in fact, that day, the discount closed quite substantially. I think GBTC was up like 9% or 10% that day. This was a few months ago. It was up 12%, I think, 12.8% on Friday. So I think, look, I think there are a bunch of levers here starting with BlackRock, but also potentially going all the way over to somebody like a Fidelity acquiring all of Grayscale. And if somebody like Fidelity acquires all of Grayscale, the first thing they're going to do is lower the fees.

And then the second thing they're going to do is pull all the levers to try to compress that discount organically. So Barry offered, when this original discount came open last year or two years ago, the first thing that he did was offer to do a buyback. But initially, at least he said, hey, we're going to buy a couple hundred million dollars of it. He didn't actually use it. He was hoping the market would close it for him sometimes the announcement right the job owning uh about the the actions you tend on taking are enough and so you don't actually have to deploy any capital uh you're seeing you're actually saying this same thing right now with icon ip right icon was trying to close uh you know kind of the the recent issues there he was trying to to use the buyback to do that recent issues there he was trying to to use

the buyback to do that i think initially he was hoping the market would do it for him so just a lot to watch here scott and i think because there's so many catalysts if you if you ever wanted or needed to own gbtc now is probably the highest expected value time frame um to own it because you have so many ways that you can win. I can foresee a day in the next couple of months where GBT is up 10% and Bitcoin's flat because it's trading entirely on those discount catalysts, not on the price. Now, the other thing to keep in mind is you're entering a Bitcoin bull cycle. You're almost certainly going to have some sort of Bitcoin bull over the next 24 to 36 months. The Bitcoin could go to 50,

60, 80, 100, whatever. So when you overlay that bullish price setup combined with the discount catalyst, BlackRock, Fidelity, SEC, FurTree, Valkyrie, I just think of all the trades you could do in crypto right now, just a straight long GBTC, as just as a trade again not as a long term like like i think bitcoin cold storage is a better long-term investment but just as a trade i don't see a lot of better uh you know risk adjusted investments than just buying gbtc as a trade here i love it man well now you can go back to bed or go on a hundred mile ultra marathon you guys don't know but mike is a savage i've been running i've been running like uh 10 miles or so a day last week i averaged like nine miles a day but i'm trying to work back to just like basic for me basic fitness is i need to be

able to run 15 or 20 miles on tuesday and for a long time or last year which includes having a kid and saying it's a kid so like we all we all know how that that affects days i mean i love your perspective thank you for coming on i know you get a lot of pushback but it's sensible you know people don't like pragmatism sometimes i don't i don't even care anymore like it's completely irrelevant i just spend my time investing and if and if the trolls and kids want to get angry, it's like, let them. So yeah, I hear you, man. Well, thank you so much. And I'm sure we'll probably,

I'll probably like see you on Twitter spaces randomly in an hour or something. All right. Sounds good, buddy. Thanks, man. Bye. Awesome, guys. Thanks once again to Mike Alfred.

You guys should all follow him, of course, on Twitter. I believe it's down in the YouTube description, but if not, we will add it down there. Now, Mike said that we are in a bulls entering a bull cycle here for bitcoin so i'm curious what big chad's has to say about that what's up chad's how are you man good hold on i'm just entering my gbtc long hold on a second everybody is currently currently getting long gbtc right now i was i was buying it with my new neural link chip while Mike was talking. How's that working out for you?

Did you just blink twice? Right eye is a bid and left eye is an ask, I think. I'm not really sure how it works, but it feels like that's what it is. So, Jose, you were probably listening in there. I know at the end you were getting your charts ready. So it gives us a perfect segue. Guys, as you know, what we're doing now, we're not doing like the full trading shows.

We're trying to knock out 15, 20 minutes, people's best ideas, which I think is awesome. So we have to start at Bitcoin right now, right? Mike just said we're entering into a bull cycle. I think we're kind of in a crap market, but then we will get to the bull cycle personally, and I can make that case. But let's share your charts and see what you're looking at.

Sure. I mean, it is a pretty crap market i mean if we're honest i mean um it's like bitcoin's hanging in there and everything else sucks right isn't that kind of the the gist i think bitcoin effectively is flat like in a week or two weeks and all coins on average are down 15 20 so yeah i was thinking about like what's the like what's the theory behind holding some of these alts like for the long term i mean i just and like even especially dino and older stuff you know like is it ever going to do anything it's such a terrible regulatory climate and risk climate for these alt coins it looks great for bitcoin but like why would you hold like dot or like some of these random ones like link you know some of this older stuff that's just you know sushi that's because you're a you're a compassionate community uh passionate community member who is in it for the tech uh you're in it for the tech

you read the white paper all right um yeah the white paper so what can we do for you today brother what do you what do you want what do we got i want to look well first i want to look at bitcoin your chart that's exactly like mine. I dig that. Yeah. Yeah. Open, high, low, close. Yeah. Yeah. See, look, look. Got the same, you know, go over here. We got the same thing. We got this

big inverse head and shoulders, the pre-test of that 25-12. You have it as a zone, but yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, that's so, it's a generalized area. If you kind of try to simplify it right we try to figure out what happened we all understand we had this epic move from you know like 12k to 60k we paused and we had this kind of um you know pause right and we had this dribble dribble dribble down you know the price lost the 200 right how do we simplify it well you know

weekly time frame we understand when the price dropped it tried to bounce it rejected when the price dropped it tried to bounce it rejected so now that we're above that level we're really paying attention right so just nice clean and simple my whole analysis has been bullish above cautious below same and um you know I did a Bitcoin Live report. What is today? Today is what, Thursday or Friday? Today is a tweens day on the way to flims day. Flims day. It's Tuesday.

I don't know. It's Tuesday. It's some kind of in-between day. And so what I talked about was we were, it was looking pretty rough and it was right. I think it was like this day. It was like last Wednesday. And we're, you know, we're heading, we're at like 25, 5K, we're just below. It's easy to get scared. And what I said was, basically, you want to be dropping the lower time frame

and looking for an entry here somewhere, because you have what's called a bullish throwback in play, right? A bullish throwback is where you have ideally a well-defined level. At some point, it's formed as resistance. You break through, and then you do a retest. That's called a bullish throwback. The opposite of that is called a pullback or an underside retest, right, where you come through, right?

So yada, yada, yada, lobster bisque. Let me just get that out of there. Let's see. So yada, yada, yada, lobster bisque. So anyway, so the point is that you're above that level. And so it's bullish. And so when you're coming back, you're dropping to a lower time frame because you're at a key level. So what do you do?

You drop to one hour. And so why would you ever be at a one hour? Well, you're at a one hour because you have the price at a key level and you potentially have some volatility. So here we were in my report, yada, yada, yada. And we dropped, boom. Okay. We're on a one hour chart and we're looking at a move down and we're looking at a consolidation, probably bearish continuation, right? Rising, you know bull bull sorry bear um pennant bear bear flag whatever you want to call it and what do you do in this situation scott right like you're looking and for me the best thing is you wait for a loss of a level and a recapture right

a spring you look for some type of a level supports be lost quickly and then recapture right so you've got that you gotta's that? Yeah. Engineered liquidity. Sweet failure. There's a million names for it. It's one of those things where it kind of feels like a secret weapon as a trader when you figure it out. You're like, oh, wait, I can just look for a level to be lost and recaptured. And now I'm long from this level.

My risk is if it goes below, I'm out. You have a really well-defined seems like a simple trick it's like here's the simple trick the banks don't want you to know you know it's like it's like kind of that thing so you got that nice little spring entry um and initially it looked like just a little mean reversion up to the 4h ma200 uh it's my 200 there it is right here's the spring and it looked it looked initially just like a um you know mean reversion to the 200 mean reversion to 200 right and we got there boom boom now we're above that so we've got a little bit of momentum in continuation so long story short short story

long um basically you know weekly chart to bullish right daily chart had some consolidation daily chart kind of put you to the test right at the key level um but i've been screaming to 25,212 literally since march yeah and people are like dude you're so why don't you share charts anymore i get it all the time like the newsletter used to be all trades and charts and this and that i was like i don't want to touch all coins and i don't care about bitcoin until it fills my bids at 25 200 that i've had sitting here now for two and a half months and they filled i met my big bitcoin buy and i'm done now we'll see what happens that's the way you got to do it you know i've seen people um i never you know i like how everyone has different um methods but i don't understand people who are like oh i'm waiting for 22K or I'm waiting for 23K.

For me, it's just such a binary, like this is the battleground. So we'll see what happens. We'll see if it holds it here. I saw an interesting tweet and I replied to it. I really try not to reply to other people's tweets because I don't want it to be like either look like I'm trying to teach someone.

You and I started and became friends though. Best buddies. That's true. On Twitter we argued over an evening star or a morning star and the importance of the gap or something. Yes, it was about whether or not yes, we don't have to get into that

because you won that battle but no, doesn't matter. But it was what was I trying to say so don't talk about the fact where we were back below the 200 right the weekly 200 and my point is that is a lower level of importance to do we hold the support zone god i said the exact same thing it's just rank order you have just become best friends wait did we just become you know you gotta learn and we'll get to some other stuff too but you gotta learn how to rank order data when you get so many different data points and that's why horizontal levels are so

important you know that's why even with a moving average you use a nearby horizontal level to structure your risk so it always comes back to horizontal level you can just look to the left there and what uh now i'm here let me just show mine yeah we when you play with these mas you generally like even if it's resistance you might get a two or three candles above it right and then it turns back down or same above so yeah like the one test of an ma is dubious you know at best but that weekly candle there that i mean a nice hammer right into that key sort of support to me is uh it says a lot i mean i guess we'll see what happens with this 200 but to me this just looks like another higher low forming from the bottom. But we're still kind of flagging our falling channel. I mean, you still got this action to play with.

So we'll see what kind of, if the immovable force meets the whatever object. I mean, you've got the falling channel into the level. There's still some more to the story indeed, but it makes it clean and simple to just say I'm bullish at 25K and above. I'm cautious below. And then just kind of build from there. You know, Ethereum sucks. You know, even though it's held, it's held nicely off the 200 daily. Right.

But it's just weak compared to Bitcoin. Right. You got it. I'm going to cut you saying Ethereum sucks and repeat it over and over and over again and put it on twitter and see them come for you they let them come for me i i think everything's nonsense i really do think most i i don't believe in any of this stuff it's all a vehicle for speculation and um it just makes it easier for me but for now but look at this i've been watching this pair

scott scotty and um the reason why I've been skeptical that Bitcoin's done is that there's been no bounce in Ethereum versus Bitcoin. I thought it looked good for a minute and then it got super rejected, by the way. Yeah, that reminds me of high school prom post. Exactly. Super rejected right there. I was like, oh, we're going to break out. It's great. No, it's bad. It's bad. So that just I mean, you know, people look at dominance dominance i don't need dominance to tell me that ethereum that um bitcoin is a flight to safety right now i don't need to look at a dominance chart to know that bitcoin's

holding up while everything else kind of sucks right there's the stuff that's in there that's okay like xrp even ing render yeah people forget dominance and i've been down this road of late because i had sort of a coming come to jesus moment with dominance and then uh yeah and cow and push back against me but yeah dominance moves because alts are doing badly yeah it doesn't tell you alts are going to do badly that's right it's just what's already happened you're kind of already know it so i don't know people kind of use the dominance chart. Let them use it. That's fine. But for me, I get what I need just by looking at Bitcoin and looking at select alts. To be clear, you focused on Bitcoin, but I'm always studying alts, not only for Bitcoin Live, but for my own trading. I always want to know where relative strength is, right?

So you've traded this stuff a long time, Scott, so have I. And so Bitcoin can drop like two grand in a day, like unexpectedly. And so when you have these big moves, I always want to know in my pocket, what are the two, three, four strongest alts? Because I go target those, right? Yeah. On crazy volatile, I'm always studying the alts. Cause I go target those. Right. Yeah. On crazy volatile. I just, I'm always studying the alt. So I know what's available for me in the right moment.

And I'm probably not trading every day. Unless it's not right now. Like anything that's interesting. Yeah. I mean, let's take a quick scan. I mean, by the way, Mike Alfred, I see you still there in the background. GBTC is booming, dude. Yeah.

I think it's fill it up yeah yeah i'm on like a delay too it's otc so you get the 15 minute i don't have the um but it's just yeah fill fill in that little wick from last week already uh on the way up yeah so i don't know you know ma200 for ethereum if you get a shot that that'd be something i'd be looking at you know the daily ma200 um bnb man i i like a contrarian play everyone thinks it's dead there's a lot of fun it looks so good here look at the 200 weekly if we're talking about yeah 200 weekly bro i mean so that red line right there listen i'm not uh yeah i i'm not trying to get the line and stuff if we're strictly looking at a chart how about it yeah go ahead why wouldn't't you? I mean, you've got, you have

the price, weekly chart, right? You have an uptrend. You have a rise in 200. The price is testing it. I mean, this is where you would want to buy, right? It's a pretty well-defined risk. You're not going to stick around below like 220 probably. And I like a contrarian play when everyone is sure it's done.

You know, all the news, that stuff gets you in so much trouble following the stories. It's like when it's done. You know, all the news, that stuff gets you in so much trouble following the stories. It's like when it's time to execute your risk, you're going to be so, you don't know where you are because you're reading the story. I mean, you've got to focus on the price.

That's always what I've always said. So anyway, BNB, I think it's of interest in this area. Mask, not so much.. Mask, not so much. Fetch, not so much. Litecoin, yeah. Kind of wait on that. We'll let it develop.

But the halving is coming. Is it halvening or halving? I don't know. It's halve. Halve you figure that one out? Have you figured it out? Have you figured out how to say how? Like Ocean's got strength, right? Compared to the market. So I'm looking to buy Ocean around 29, 30 cents, right? As long as this zone holds, right? So I'm watching Ocean. I'm watching maybe XRP if I get a dip to 42, 43 cents, MA 200 and daily, you know, I could see getting interested there. INJ, I'm interested. 550, 560.

It's so interesting when the news aligns, by the way. Like XRP, you just happened to mention. Yeah. Like this WIC right here was the day of the Hinman docks. Yeah, what was that? I saw a big release coming out that came out, and right before that came out, it dropped, and now it's back to... It's just interesting that the news days, you know, you get that. It was basically, it came out and right before they came out it dropped and now it's back to it's just

interesting that the news days you know you get that it was that basically it it turned out that was likely kind of a nothing burger for xrp maybe bigger for ethereum but maybe big for ethereum so it's a little short like look at that boom boom boom you know look at a little up thrust so that was pretty clean i mean it's sideways i mean we're at the point now where we're like looking at this chart and saying it looks pretty good i mean so that's the climate you're in when this chart that's bad right it's just it's just sideways i mean it literally is sideways with a slight bullish kind of hint to it or tint or cue to it i and j looks pretty decent render still looks pretty good i'm a buyer you know 160 daily i 160 daily, I made 200. I'd be, you know, I'd be interested there. I just don't know about altcoins right now.

And maybe that's why you want to look closer because it feels really scary. But dominance would tell you that if you looked closer at it. Yeah, I know. It's good. I'm going to get dominated by the market if I keep buying some of these SH coins. But like, look at like something like this, like Gala. It's no good. There's people holding charts like this, adding, I'll add, I'll add.

Don't just keep adding. LDO, not so good. Look at DOT. What is this? Oof, oof, oof. I mean, this thing is like CPR isn't even going to do it. I mean, it looks polka dead. Polka dead.

But then compared to Bitcoin. and then if we say that now that we said that that means it's going to go to the moon to the moon right uh you know you know that song i don't know another crypto boy ceo of being unemployed have you seen that thing yeah it's like the parody video of skater boy or something it's something but he's like this ethereum it rings true the guy's like this ethereum is gonna get me out of this town right and that's the feeling that people have where it's like this coin is gonna like you know what i mean it's gonna elevate me and take me to the next level but um and so some people stack these things and look at dot scott right here's here's against

the dollar now here's just a great illustration of the market there's versus bitcoin looks great right i mean so like some people like oh i'm just i'm gonna keep stacking you know whatever but like it's a smaller piece it's a you know a larger piece of a smaller pie like look at that i mean just forget about it so there are a lot of charts basically look like this weak versus bitcoin people are selling it they don't know what they can hold um even like stablecoin fud and we'll circle back to bitcoin even like stablecoin fud like people like oh i i can't hold my tether let me just buy bitcoin so it's like bitcoin wins in the end i yeah i it's hard not to agree with that sentiment i'm just like uh reading all the breaking news that's coming in over here uh fpl wannabe wants to know when ched coin yeah when you know i'm working on it i'll let you know uh lots of ched coin gives you your book yeah ched coin brother ched coin no i've never messed around every ched coin you buy you get a new quote you get a new quote for

every book so you get 365 ched coins in get a new quote for every book. So you get 365 Tad Coins in total supply. I've never messed around with that stuff, NFTs, any of that stuff. But maybe I'm not smart enough. So I'm not casting aspersions on it. I don't know. What are you doing? Are you playing alts here or what? I'm doing nothing.

I bought Bitcoin at $25,200, as I said I would, for three months. That's where I focused all my energy. And now I'm going to wait and see what happens. When we were at $30K, there's a lot of enthusiasm, and people were cautious. Sure, and they said, I would love to buy back at $25K, but once it gets there, we're terrified. They never do. They never do. I got to set the bid early and then uh then like put it behind like four like two fa's and uh forget your password and do all the stuff that prevents you from going and moving it when it obviously uh hits you know what what was i talking to you last time you're talking about like having your keys scattered in like 20 different

states and all these i can't even imagine i can't even imagine like keys people come for my keys bro you're gonna do what a messed up space you can't just buy something and uh well i will be able to when the black rock etf comes yeah and with my gbtc right what about the whole chain they're gonna they're gonna like pick a different fork and then control it and so it's like a trojan horse or is that just conspiracy nonsense? I mean, dude, I,

I'm so, I don't know. Like everything goes in one ear out the other with me right now. It's so hard to find signal in the noise, but that's, I'm going to just go ahead and assume that's not a problem until I see that it is probably not. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyways, dude, we got Twitter spaces and 15 minutes guys. Again, we have JW Verrett joining, uh, Twitter space and say, that's the guy who just said Gary Gensler's fucked. Uh, so anyone who, anyone who's on the fire, Gary Gensler trained and this guy actually was Gary Gensler's advisor and thanks.

Gary Gensler screwed friend of mine, you know, friend of mine. So we're going to talk about, talk to that guy. And, uh, I just found out I'm actually recording a podcast this afternoon with warren davidson uh the congressman so that's way way way too hard i hope it's worth it it's great it's all totally worth it you know i'm gonna get back to my video games after this so enjoy your video games enjoy your video games i'm gonna let you go man all right all right good talking man thank you so much always pleasure man thank you guys, of course, at the beginning, so you'll notice we've got like a new format

here. Are you guys enjoying it? We have like some more people. Watch it. But we're trying to do, like I said, you know, we got Macro Monday, but on the rest of the days, we're kind of doing you know, do the news, have a guest. Tail end, we bring on a trader, share their ideas. Tomorrow, I think we have Chris Inks and Charlie Burton,

two traders at the back end after we're going to do the news and do the thing that we just did and tell you what's happening then we go over twitter spaces and it's awesome working hard here working hard here to build this show up and of course none of that happens without our sponsors rolling what if i could actually make that go faster like using ai or something we could i could like dj i was having her down a while right bringing it back but yeah guys you can trade all this stuff we're talking about pretty much on the old okx machine so go over there and do that and get a whole bunch of free money and maybe uh support uh mclaren and man Manchester City like they do.

Guys, that's all I got for you today. I have to go figure out what the hell's happening on Twitter spaces today. Love you. What a good show. I appreciate you guys watching in. Thanks to Cheds and Alfred. Peace. Let's go.