The Wolf Of All Streets - Billions In Crypto Bet On Trump To Win US Election

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Friday Five is THE show about the main news in crypto. Join me and Nathaniel Whittemore as we delve into the main topics that moved the markets.  Nathaniel Whittemore: https://twitter.com/nlw  ►►WHO DO YOU THINK SATOSHI IS? LEAVE YOUR ANSWER HERE AND EARN RTB TOKENS! 👉https://roundtable.rtb.io/shortUrl/HIAzSBY ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEKDAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►► The Arch Public Unleash algorithmic trading. Discover how algorithms used by hedge-funds are now accessible to traders looking for unparalleled insights and opportunities!  👉https://thearchpublic.com/  ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. Use code '10OFF' for a 10% discount. 👉https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://x.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.com/ Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #FridayFive 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.

of the US election. Could this actually begin to impact the election itself? Is this the mainstream use case for crypto? This is just one of many stories. We do the Friday five every week. This week, it could have been the Friday 15. There's so much happening in markets and in crypto right now. Some of it also is just absolutely hilarious. NLW and I are going to unpack it all for you right now. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Streets. Let's go. Yeah, it's a great closer. But the first story that we have this week, arguably the biggest, we've talked about it quite a lot here. Money Electric, the Bitcoin mystery.

We finally know from HBO, a very reliable source for deep documentary insight, who Satoshi Nakamoto is. And obviously, it's this guy, Peter Todd, that nobody thought was Satoshi Nakamoto, who has openly said, I'm not Satoshi Nakamoto, laughed at everybody, and is definitely not Satoshi Nakamoto. Yeah, so you've talked about this a lot this week, I'm sure. What have the conversations been for you? Have they evolved over time? Basically, what I'm interested in is, has anyone maybe sat back a little bit, like, no, maybe, you know, when I think about it a little bit more? Or has it just been a steady skepticism the whole way there are some maybe people uh but it's not compelling evidence that's all i can say is that it's no more compelling than the case for hal

finney or nick zabo or adam back or any of these other people that have been floated i mean i've seen some pretty like strong defenses that it could be Peter Todd on X, but I reached out to him and he's just pissed off. I was like, hey, would you do an interview? Come on Spaces. He said, dude, I'll answer any questions you have over email. I want no more mainstream people bothering me. I don't want to be on video and audio. I'm a Bitcoin guy. I did this documentary because I thought it was about Bitcoin. And all of a sudden, I'm getting all this attention that I would have never wanted. No cypherpunk wants to be identified on HBO as Satoshi Nakamoto. Yeah. I will say that's exactly what Satoshi would say to that interview request.

Well, that's the whole game theory. No. So listen, I think a couple of things. I think one, the documentary actually, the in, in the moment when he's confronted, I think Peter Todd's statement around how it's so misses the point around what Bitcoin is actually supposed to be is quite poignant. And it's a, it's a perfect way to sort of encapsulate that in a way that none of us actually have to, because he does such a good job of, of really reinforcing that, you know, Bitcoin is not about the identity of this person, even though it's an intriguing mystery. It's about everything that's happened subsequent to that. And so there's, it's almost like, so it's so definitive. I didn't feel like I had to say anything else about it this week. You know, the, the, I will

only add this, the fact that this many years later with this much interest and the sort of resources, you know, to put a full HBO documentary behind it, that it's still this huge question is unbelievable. I mean, this is why the myth-making is so astounding around this. You know, the idea of a person just leaving their project is so out of sync with everything in modern history. And the fact that there's really like, there's no super credible, there's not really even leading front runner candidate. There's just a bunch of sort of equally plausible theories. And that's fairly mind boggling that in this day and age, that's the case. I totally agree. Here was the real question for me. The

reason I watched it, you obviously watched it as well. The big reveal, I didn't expect much, but I wanted to see effectively how an HBO documentary would portray the Bitcoin space and the evolution, and if it would actually deliver the message that he did at the end as to why this is so important, why we need this asset class, why this should exist. And I actually thought that if you were a mainstream person watching the documentary, you may be compelled to go take a deeper look at Bitcoin. Yeah, totally. Listen, I don't think it was a net negative. And listen, it is very rare that someone gets into Bitcoin for all of the right reasons that people stick around Bitcoin. Usually it's just because number is going up and then they convert into something else.

The fact that some people might be compelled to get interested because this is a fascinating rabbit hole internet style mystery is okay, relatively speaking. I mean, honestly, you could argue that it's a better reason to get in than just sheer greed. So I don't know. I think you're right. I think that it will be seen ultimately as a net positive, even if it sort of reinforces the point that Bitcoiners feel already about media. I will also say to their credit, they left in that whole statement. They didn't cut out, you know, they didn't sort of, you know, try to just get a bunch

of awkward looks from Peter and Adam. They could have done a lot more with editing, and they let it breathe. They let his statement stand there as the definitive piece. They actually, in some ways, undermined their own reveal by letting him have the final word, which I think is to their credit. Well, that's fair. I showed the clip from HBO the other day as I was trying to show who Satoshi Nakamoto was and my YouTube stream got immediately taken down. So I think there's a conspiracy theory against me and that I had actually probably solved this and was in the process.

But HBO got me censored and taken down. Next time for sure. I think it's a net positive. And I think you made the most important point, which is that the mystery continues. It only makes it bigger. It only drives the myth of Bitcoin, the importance of decentralization. And it really means there will just never be another Bitcoin. The longer that it goes on, the harder it is not to admire the damn thing, even if it's not for you.

That's exactly right. So I think the next story, we're going to wrap a few together. There's a whole lot of SEC talk, DOJ talk, FBI talk. So we'll just say that this is regulators and government agencies in general. The first we have here is a crypto executive who could soon be running the SEC. Of course, this is Dan Gallagher being floated at SEC chairman under Donald Trump. We know that he was actually an SEC commissioner before, currently Robinhood chief legal officer. We've seen this name floating around actually for weeks. I haven't saw it floating around on the Democrat side, but I think undoubtedly a much more potentially pro-crypto advocate, someone who's likely to stop the madness that we're seeing right now than obviously Chairman Gary Gensler. I mean, how important is this? What does this signal could happen under the Trump administration?

Well, I think there's a couple of things. One, Gallagher is to your point, he point, he was previously at the SEC. I think he is a reminder, or this name being plausible is a reminder, that there are tons of folks on both sides of the aisle who are legal professionals, who are not hostile to crypto and who are interested in what it could be. And to some extent, the story is less about the specific name and more about the fact that it's very hard to imagine not brighter times ahead relative to Gensler, who is not just, you know, not only is Gensler, and I think maybe we'll get into least in part as defending the US dollar as the only currency, which is a mandate that's not written down anywhere. He's taken that upon himself,

but it's very clear that that's how he thinks. I didn't know much about Dan Gallagher before this name started coming out, but it's clear he has a ton of respect from lots and lots of different people, people who have worked with him on both sides of the aisle. When the statements from politicians are all somewhere along the lines of, even when we disagreed, he was great to work with, that's the type of person that you want in that type of role. Yeah, 100% agree. And I think that we've seen that regardless of the rhetoric from either side, especially obviously from Harris saying that she's making a pivot, the SEC under Biden-Harris is not stopping, right? We have a few more cases even just this week

as we were hoping to see things wind down into the election. Obviously we have, I'll show you, Cumberland DRW acted as unregistered crypto dealer. We have to unpack this one because this is absolutely bananas to me. But crypto.com, as we know, received a Wells notice, immediately filed suit, which has become the en vogue move for the crypto industry to just sue

immediately the second you get a note. And then we're going to dive into the FBI's shitcoin. But first, I want to kind of start here with Cumberland. Oh, and then there was also Bitnomial, who's getting out ahead of it and suing the SEC basically on XRP futures contracts. So there's so much to unpack here in one week. But Cumberland, this one is nuts because Cumberland is a market maker, obviously outside of crypto as well, a huge financial firm. And if you dig into this, it's kind of like they're getting sued just for market making? Yeah. I mean, listen, this is like, it feels like a last blast of sort of energy against the industry in some ways. It's sort of like leaving no regulation by enforcement stone unturned. And I think that you can see the tide shifting is embodied in the fact that every one of these firms, these things are no longer treated with sort of concern and nervousness and, oh, no, what are we going to do now?

It's just a suiting up for war as soon as these things happen. Every one of these firms is having the exact same response, which is to take it to the mat immediately. And there's no way the SEC is going to be able to prosecute all of these things at the same time. They're not going to be able to get settlements the way that they were. So I don't know. Again, it's very hard to read it as anything other than the SEC attempting to, one, gum up the works of crypto, which is entangling us in legal mess. And two, try to basically lay out everything that they might get through, any precedent that they might get from any sort of judge decision they want to try. So it's sort of like anything that they can go after, they're going after because they're just trying to put points on the board

from a legal precedent standpoint. At least that's what it seems like to me from outside. As I dug into it more, it just is confounding. I mean, this is actually a completely new tack by the SEC. We know they go after the crypto industry. But as I said, I mean, Cumberland's been around since the 90s. They're the market maker for a number of the ETFs as well. But this is basically them getting in trouble just for being a market maker, neutral, creating a spread and keeping the books for any crypto product. Like, so they're not doing it. They're being basically they're buying and selling these things to themselves or providing liquidity to keep a market functioning and liquid, which is their job. And now they're getting in trouble just for offering that service. And then there was even a claim that because they had put out research on some of these tokens, that they were manipulating

the market by telling people what to buy and sell. This is really like the most aggressive suit I think we've seen. The SEC won't win, but if you thought that there was any cool down from the SEC heading into the election, this just proves it's completely, completely non-existent. Yeah, 100%. I mean, listen, again, the breadth of this and the sort of what they're going after, again, kind of just pushes me back to this question of whether they're just trying to get anything by a judge, basically. It's absolutely nuts on this one. I think, like you said, they're just firing every bullet they have left in the gun and hoping that they make it very, very difficult after November, regardless who wins. But the next story that's part of this is just incredible. The FBI

gets creative to expose crypto's worst kept secret. I'm sure you guys saw this. They created a token called NFA and basically then went and solicited market makers. Speaking, these are the different kinds of market makers who then provided basically to get you on CoinMarketCap by providing fake liquidity, wash trading, buying and selling to themselves to pump this up for retail. And what's incredible is this guy has been out here saying he's doing it transparently for ages. For 15 grand, he'll fake your exchange volume. You'll get on CoinMarketCap.

I mean, he admitted to this years ago, has gotten tons of clients. This is just one of the four firms. And then of course, you have CoinDesk literally doing paid content just two months ago. Forgot it. We did this. I mean, this is actually industry standard at this point. It's great that this level of fraud is being attacked. Wash trading exists in all markets. This is not unique here. This is one of those cases where regulators and legislators actually should be cracking down and has nothing really to do with this. But I mean, this is very pervasive, obviously, in the industry, especially with new things launching. Yeah. I mean, this was kind of impressive, the degree, the lengths that they

went to do this. But I mean, listen, I agree. I think there are a lot of tactics that have been derogator in crypto that no one, if you actually sort of took a step back, thinks are appropriate. You know, they're just things that you got away with for a while. I think, let's put it this way. We have all of the regulatory enforcement actions we had faced over the last couple of years were for stuff like this. I don't think anyone would really have a big problem with sort of the regulatory actions. Yeah, apparently the FBI also violated an MIT copyright with the smart contracts. I don't know if you saw that story, but there's a whole other wrinkle that came out today. But yeah, that's the point of this, I think, is that nobody is against cleaning up the industry where there's actually

bad actors. And none of that requires new or innovative legislation or laws. Certain things are just against the law in financial markets, and it doesn't matter what asset they're trading to do it. But this really does show the bipolarity of what Cumberland's being charged with, because it's completely legitimate. It's basically the same theoretical practice and what these guys all did. But the question to me becomes, how can retail or anyone in crypto trust any launch of a new token? Even if you believe in the technology, you deeply believe in the future of it, you know that behind the scenes that 90% probably of these things that are launching,

whether knowingly or not, are behaving in some manner like this. They're hiring somebody to help them market in some way or create volume to get them on a centralized exchange. And at the end of the day, you're just going to end up a victim. This is like the most Bitcoin maximalist argument you can make. Don't touch any of this stuff. Just touch Bitcoin. Yeah. I mean, it's why even if people don't always love the maxis, it's very hard to argue that they don't have some points some of the time. I mean, I think that people who have been in this space for a while, it's almost like they handicap whatever's going on with tokens based on these things it's the same with influencers you know like whatever key opinion leaders or whatever we call them this

cycle uh i hate it um you know like i just i guess that it's it's hard what i sometimes struggle with is the fact that you know for people who are kind of like grizzled veterans it's like of course a lot of this is bs of course that you know i'm people who are kind of like grizzled veterans, it's like, of course, a lot of this is BS. Of course, you know, I'm going to be skeptical of anything that anyone is saying. The issue is like when, you know, we don't have any of this, this cycle, but when new people flood in, they do look to some new set, you know, some set of established voices. They find whoever the algorithms on the networks, you know, recommend them. And they don't necessarily know that it's all BS at first, which is, you know, the point that like, you know, the sort of critics of the industry would make. So listen, to the extent that we can clean any of this up now before there's any

sort of retail return, great, but you know, we'll see. They're going to come in buying dog coins on Tron or something anyways, no matter how much you try to teach them. At least meme coins, I guess, are more honest. I mean, there is actually quite a bit to be said for the honesty of meme coins. I mean, it's just like it's the financial nihilism as an industry. And, you know, listen, if you take a person like Gensler at the actual meaning of his words, he continues to claim that he is a, you know, he and the SEC are merit neutral, and all they care about is people having the right information. If meme coins say we're nothing, it's just a big financial game, maybe that's more all right than pretending it's the future of finance or whatever.

Vegas or the lottery, they're both completely legal. And that's more, I think, what the meme coin casino is. Now, what we definitely need in the world, I would say, is more layer twos. So Uniswap developer unveils own layer two network, Unichain, built on optimism tech. Pretty big story. I think we're going to be getting a lot more of these layer twos. But once again, who's like layer twos are the new layer one, basically. And I think one of the things that's interesting is if you watch the patterns of cycles, one of the things that tends to characterize each cycle, the upswing into a bull cycle, is there's some new layer one that is sort of the hyped, big, exciting thing. Now, it's the hyped, big, exciting thing. Now it's the hyped, big, exciting thing because it's almost always a good venture bet to back those things. And so there's this big pools of capital that tend to be very excited about new layer ones. And I think one of the things that broke this pattern and this cycle, and I actually firmly believe this, SWE and Aptos were lining up to

be this for this cycle. And this isn't a knock on them. They might be doing fine. They might be, you know, able to go off and do great things. However, Solana coming back from the dead or really never being as dead as people thought, really sucked the momentum out of the space for yet another round of layer ones. And I think that this is one of the, again, if you zoom five, 10 years out, when people look back at what happened between kind of, you know, the end of 2022 and where we are now, one of the truly big stories will be the fact that in sort of like the moment when they could have all flooded away, the builders stuck around on Solana. They kept building. They didn't care that it went down 95%. They just kept building it.

And, you know, the thing never went away. And it really did crowd out space, I think, for a lot of the enthusiasm for Layer 1s. So in the meantime, Layer 2 has become a more desirable place to place those big base vets. And I'm not saying that that's what Uniswap is doing, but it certainly is part of the pattern, I think. But why do you think that Uniswap at this time is deciding to launch a layer two? Everything they've done has effectively worked in the past. Uniswap itself is a powerful decentralized exchange. It was an industry leader.

And it just seems like what they've built could be used on Ethereum or any other layer two. What's novel here when everybody's still using the same optimism stack? I mean, the question is, there's two questions. One is, what is the stated ambition? And two, is there any possibility that it's not just another source of revenue? That's the question to ask. And that's the reasonable gauntlet to run them through. Presumably, this sort of announcement post has a set of technical reasons that they think it's important now or plugged into their ecosystem or whatever. But the seeming answer is almost like my baseline assumption with anything when it comes to people

launching new chains is money. So again, I'm not accusing them of that. It's just sort of that. That's the thing that has to be disproven to me if I see something. They're a business. I wouldn't even blame them if that was the stated intention pretty ballsy of them actually when still under the uh under the microscope of the sec and the regulator because this is effectively launching a token right to some degree so it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out and that will largely be dependent on who's in charge i would say next next time. Next story we have here is that Stripe has reinstated crypto payments on Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon. If you guys remember, Stripe was way ahead of the curve, I think in 2014, enabling crypto payments. And then in 2018, they got rid

of them. And never to be seen again until now here in 2024. What changed and does this matter? I think it's quietly a fairly decent size one. Now they telegraphed this and announced this a while ago. So, you know, there's kind of two parts of this. One is how important is the signaling? And I think the signaling is important, right? But it was, it sort of was part and parcel of a broader shift that was happening, you know, three, six, whatever, however many months ago it was that they announced that they were going to be bringing this back. And, you know, I think that, you know, Stripe being as big a force as they are and sort of giving the stamp of legitimacy back to this is a big deal. When it comes to the actual practical reality of it, the way that I would characterize it is it gives crypto payments a chance to be relevant. It doesn't ensure that they're going to be relevant, but Stripe has become so dominant in sort of the way

that web services build themselves that it at least creates, it radically reduces one barrier to entry to accepting crypto if crypto payments are going to be a thing. So that doesn't mean, the supply of crypto payments does not mean there will be demand for crypto payments, but it at least opens the opportunity. It's plumbing, right? It's yet another piece of infrastructure that if the demand comes in now, it actually can find a home, but we don't know if it will. I mean, a lot of people view the ETFs that way for institutions, right? Well, we have them.

So now if there's actual demand, people will buy the ETFs and the product exists so that they can gain access. I think it's a big story for all the reasons that you said. And I think the next big story and sort of the final real story here is with our title, Billions in Crypto Bet on Trump to Win US Elections. I mean, I guess technically it's billions bet on the US election, not necessarily on him. But polymarket's been absolutely exploding. It's become very mainstream. And now Elon Musk even advocating for crypto prediction market, Polymarket, which really set the volumes flying. As you can see now, after he did that, Trump at 55.2%, Kamala at 43.9%. This is the biggest spread we've basically had since she joined the election. And obviously, I think he was at 70% against

Biden. But 533 million in trading volume in September, up massively from August. We're already getting mainstream articles about the polymarket bubble and everyone betting on the U.S. election. also legally now offering US election betting, which is non-crypto native, and had to go to pretty great lengths against the CFTC to get that approved. And I think the CFTC actually still trying to push back and they don't want it. But this is a big thing. And I guess the real question is, is this a crypto use case or is it just another market where people can bet? And are people putting their actual money on the line more compelling than polling? So I tend to think that we, because it's been such a niche behavior so far, we don't really have good mental models yet for how to understand what election betting data is telling us, right? At this point, we're so experienced with polls, for example, that we understand what they do and don't say, or at

least we have sort of patterns that we can recognize. When it comes to election betting, the standard argument you get from people who are really excited about it, which is, by the way, usually when their candidate is winning, is that it's more real because people are putting their money on the line. I tend to not be in that camp. I think that it's a mechanism for self-fulfilling prophecy. I think especially now that, look, it is the most perfect ally of the 24-hour news cycle and the social media-powered news cycle that thirsts constantly for new updated numbers. Everyday polls couldn't be delivered fast enough for the maw of news media to suck them in. So of course, they're covering this thing, which changes every minute. The fact that you can see changes during a speech, during a

breaking event, right? It's the fastest feedback cycle available to people. Now, once people realize that, once they realize that everyone in the media, social media and traditional media, is covering these things as though they are polls, well, then it becomes a lever that you can pull to try to shape the narrative, right? And so you pouring money into your chosen candidate is not just... Basically, I don't think that there's a bunch of people who are completely objective here just saying what they think is going to happen. I think there's a bunch of people who are biased towards an outcome that they want, who are trying to push towards that outcome. And by the way, that's fine if that's the case. I just think we don't understand how much of this behavior is that versus how much of

this behavior is just, it's another thing to bet on from neutral arbiters, right? And until we do, I think it's very dangerous to overly ascribe anything to these numbers, because it's going to be some weird combination of, again, those neutral betters who are just trying to say what they think is going to happen, and folks who are trying to push it in a direction, either for political or for financial purposes, right? You could also not want to candidate but still think they have a better chance to win and think that the chances that you can influence other people to push in that direction are better and go that way. Now, this is very different than the like, it's Elon secretly behind the scenes, putting tons of money in. That's not what I'm

saying at all. I think the type of behavior that I'm describing is the much more normal, small scale, kind of just rational self-interest type of approach to making money off of these things, right? Yeah. And it's important to remember that PolyMarket, once again, is non-US. Theoretically, US citizens can't even use it. And since it is crypto-based, we know that there's a lean to the right, right? And so the self-fulfilling prophecy makes a ton of sense, first of all, but how many people in crypto who are figuring out how to use Polymarket are genuinely going to bet on Harris? I would say you have a pretty good standard deviation off where this comes way closer to the middle as a result of just those factors.

I can't imagine a person that I know who's deeply in crypto from outside the United States being like, I'm going to put a bunch of money on Harris. Yeah. I mean, what will be interesting to see though, as things happen. So now you've got this spread really widening. At what point do the arbitragers like start to see that like, basically, you know, let's say that the opinion that we just shared becomes more normalized over the next couple of weeks.

Well, then how would you respond to that? The rational financial way to respond to that is to go put a bunch of money on Harris-Waltz to try to close that spread or basically to try to win from what you think is an inappropriate spread. So I don't know. It's pretty fascinating. And even with the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of it, it could still be self-correcting in the way that markets often are because the financial opportunity on the other side becomes so appealing that the self-fulfilling prophecy bet becomes less. I mean, it is really interesting no matter what. And again, this is completely outside of conspiracy theory stuff. Yeah.

I mean, people do it in sports betting all the time, actually, where you're a fan of a team, but you bet on the other team because you like the spread and it's a win-win. Either my team wins or if they lose, at least I get some consolation money. And there could be an aspect of that, have a full election cycle worth of data to actually kind of, you know, see what happens. What I would love to see from a, you know, anthropological study kind of perspective is if you could have a separate, you know, set of polls around why people were making the bets that they were making, I think you'd have a lot better information than just trying to figure it out from the numbers. Okay. That's all the real stories for the week, but now we have to discuss our collective favorite story of the week. I will go out on a limb and say that this is the single greatest LinkedIn post of all time on perhaps the single worst social media platform of all time, which I would view LinkedIn through that lens. But here we have Ryan Salameh,

the ex-co-CEO of FDM, FTX Digital Mark digital markets i'm happy to share that i'm starting a new position as inmate at fci cumberland he's going to jail obviously i think for seven and a half years maybe my favorite part though is our friends from this show's comments uh first here he's changed his actual experience to inmates that's now in his job resume. Dan Held. Congrats, Ryan. Well-deserved. He was on the show last week. Matthew Siegel, who was recently.

Congrats. And my favorite, Mike Alfred. I've heard good things about that shop. Find a mentor early if you can. You know, the other part of this is if you ever wanted to see the bot activity that has become normalized on LinkedIn. So I saw this right after he posted it. And already there were dozens and dozens of not ironic tweet responses. A million banned responses of congrats, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Great to see! Exclamation point. Yeah, it's a pretty epic LinkedIn post. I think it's going to be very hard for someone to top that one as a memorable LinkedIn post, I will say. I'm reading the comment section is the reason why I pay my internet bills. Taking this whole locked in for Q4 thing a bit far. No, I mean, the actual comments are astounding. They're the best part of this. But the guy has a sense of humor about what's happening here.

And you got to give him a hell of a lot of credit for that. Didn't he just go on Tucker? He was on. I haven't watched the interview other than the clips that have been bandied around. But I think it was a long interview. It was a two-hour interview. And I think a lot of people viewyan as somewhat collateral damage in this entire process i think that there's let's put it this way i think there is a very reasonable stance to have

which is you did a bunch of stuff you shouldn't have and you're going to pay some price for that but that is not mutually exclusive from it sure feels like the u.s government decided that they didn't want to try Sam again for all of his election stuff. And so they decided to just put it all on Ryan. And I think that a lot of people look at how this has all played out and basically see the government kind of treating Ryan as though he was Sam for all intents and purposes when it came to the election stuff. And I don't think that strikes a lot of people as super fair, but here we are. Let's remember that Carolyn Ellison only got two years.

Ryan's getting seven and a half years. Sam got 25 years. And Ross Ulbricht is going to be in jail for two life sentences plus 40 years. So I think there's some inconsistency in the way that the judicial system has handled people in the crypto industry. Oh, and by the way, TD Bank is paying like $3 billion for basically allowing drug trafficking for the last 20 years. And I don't see anybody getting the CZ treatment there. Yeah. It's... Well, whatever. What are you going to do? Can't change certain things, but it's pretty astounding. You're going to post on LinkedIn. That's what you're going to do.

I'm going to post about that on LinkedIn. It're going to post on LinkedIn. That's what you're going to do. I'm going to post about that on LinkedIn. It's going to go wildly viral. Guys, that's all we've got for you on the Friday, I guess, 12. I don't even know how many stories that was. It felt like a lot more than five. We're not that consistent. Follow NLW, of course, The Breakdown. You guys should be listening to that every single day.

Otherwise, we will be back next week, of course, and I'll be back for Macro Monday, 9 a.m. on Monday. See you guys soon. Thank you, man. Later, guys.