The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Breaks $61K!!! ALTS Next? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

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All right, I'm glad you've changed the title from 60K to 61K. It looks like you might need to change it to 68K in a few minutes. So be ready, moderator. I think it's behind the screen. Let me see what it's at now. 60.9, Brock 61K. Holy shit. Ryan, Kyle, how are you guys?

Can anyone hear me? Let's go. Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, so me and Kyle did a show. Fucking mental. This is crazy. This is insane. So me and Kyle were just doing a space on token launches earlier.

We're talking about comparing how the – we're talking about Bitcoin first, but how the rotation into alts hasn't really kicked in. So that's going to be the next thing to watch out for. But let's just focus on Bitcoin's price, Ryan. I'm kind of sick of hearing your voice because I was listening to your show just now. Carl did. Carl did. Carl's better than me, bro. No, no no you did we'll go we'll go to you and then carl we'll go i want both of your takes on this um and then i want actually chris and alex alex will be coming on he's got a different take to everyone else um but but ryan you've kind of been saying for a while that before you were saying wait for a pullback but now you're

saying look we've crossed the stage where we may see a pullback but it'll be very short-lived and it's not a time now to wait for a pullback and re-enter the market in a bull market like this it's just better sit and wait we're past the stage of waiting for a pullback you know what the thing is now the hardest thing to do now the hardest thing to do now is to just sit back and do nothing and enjoy the ride because if you got in the market if you're in now you probably got in quite early i mean if you've been in for the ride. Because if you got in the market, if you're in now, you probably got in quite early. I mean, if you've been in for the last couple of weeks, you probably got in quite early. And it seems like, it seems like if all the theories are correct, we're still very early in the cycle.

But the cycle is a cycle which has been shifted left. And so what that means is that things are, we are now getting into the parabolic part of the cycle. And the hardest thing in the parabolic part of the cycle is to actually believe that it's happening and not to be tempted to get out and try and buy back cheaper. That's the hardest part. And so I think for me, the hardest part now is just to do nothing. I'll give you an example. The other day, I thought, wow, this market's getting so frothy. I sold my Phantom, I sold some Phantom tokens

that I took on leverage. I didn't sell any of my spot bags, but some of my Phantom that I bought on leverage, I sold them just to get to close leverage a little bit, which is probably the responsible thing to do. But I sold them at 41 cents.

And now, at 45.45 or $0.48, I'm trying to buy them back because I realized that I made a mistake. And that's the hardest thing to do now. The hardest thing to do now is just to do nothing. Don't buy, don't sell. Just ride the wave of everything that you've prepared up until now. That's the hardest thing to do now. Another thing you're talking about as well is that if you look at other metrics,

I was talking about this yesterday, whether it's YouTube subscribers or YouTube views or Coinbase app downloads, retail is far from entering this market. We're still in the very early stages, led by institutions. I mean, Coinbase's downloads went up by 100 points. I think it was like 380, now like 270-something. And then you also talked about how three weeks before the peak in the last two bull markets, it got to number one three weeks before the peak. And so we're far off that level.

We're at two-something, 270-something, which, again, kind of reaffirms. Both times that the Coinbase app hit number one in the app store, two weeks later or three weeks later the market crashed right now coinbase app was at 390 yesterday and now it's at 290 i'm just i'm giving you more uh rough numbers so we're at the point now where retail's starting to come in i started to get a whole lot of messages i showed them on my show where people are like hey like, how do I use the exchange? Or, hey, I forgot my password. How do I retrieve my password?

People are starting to come back into the market now because they're starting to get real FOMO about this Bitcoin pump. That's where we're at. We're just starting to get newbies starting to come into the market. Kyle, we were talking about this in a previous space.

We did a countdown to one project we both invested in, Bebo. We were talking about mainly the rotation to out. I saw very early, we're not seeing the same froth we saw on the last bull market, and how this rally is led by quant. I'd be interested to see how that rotation looks like. Maybe it could be hit an all-time high before the halving, the question I keep asking panelists, but how that rotation looks like. Maybe could we hit an all-time high before the halving? The question I keep asking panelists, but also that rotation to ALT. How long do you think that will take and how aggressive do you think it is now that it's led by institutional money for the first time?

The herd is finally here. Yeah, we did discuss this earlier. I think that, well, yeah, so what Rayyan said is definitely a clear indicator that over the past day, 24 hours, there's been some more retail interest. I haven't seen it yet in social media growth much, but again, that's this 24-hour. Yesterday, the Google search trends was down. I'm curious to see what it is today. But I would expect that we're going to get into it soon. Can I just maybe interject here? A lot of people are using the Google search data as the metric.

I don't think that's the right metric. And I'll tell you why it's not the right metric. I think that a lot of people already know what Bitcoin is. I don't think we're going to teach people. I think the idea of teaching people what Bitcoin is was probably last cycle and the cycle before.

I think a lot of people now know what Bitcoin is, but just don't have exposure to it or just haven't had the courage to pull the trigger or something like that. I don't know. I think in terms of...

Anyone sitting on the sidelines? Kyle, I want to give you the mic back to keep answering the question. But Ryan, one more question terms of anyone anyone sitting on the sidelines carl i want to give you the mic back to keep asking the question but right one more question to you anyone sitting on the sidelines what's your advice to them now i think now just waiting for that correction look i think now sit on the sidelines unless you've got some really undervalued alts but right now on bitcoin i just think for me too fast too high too fast too soon hold on you're saying sit on the sidelines i thought you're saying that at a stage like this For me, too high, too fast, too soon. Hold on. You're saying sit on the sidelines. I thought you were saying that at a stage like this,

you just can't time it anymore. We're past the stage where you sit on the sidelines. The last two weeks, I've been telling people, get in, get in, get in. Don't worry about price. Get in, get in, get in. Now I'm saying, look, now it's 61,000. Bitcoin's gone up 60% in the last month.

55% in the last month. I don't know. I can't give you i can't tell you to do something that i ordinarily wouldn't do um uh and so like right now i wouldn't be buying the queen i've got to be honest i think that uh um yeah i think that i i would be you're not i i don't know i i wouldn't expect a severe pullback. We saw a billion dollars come in over the past 48 hours from the ETF's net inflow. And then we saw Michael Saylor the day before, whatever, $300 million. There's Hong Kong ETF on the near horizon.

There's other countries with ETFfs on the near horizon um and i think right now is about the time where like i'm just trying to put myself in the in the mindset of if i was a registered investment advisor and also there was uh i talk about it my show today that there was a recent event um where swan bitcoin cory went i think it was cory from swan bitcoin went to this blackrock registered investment advisor event where they were, BlackRock was saying that they were suggesting that in a conservative bet that you should allocate 28% of your portfolio to Bitcoin, which is fucking nuts compared to Fidelity, whose options right now are 1% to 3%. But I think that if I'm putting myself in the shoes of a salesperson, right, and I want

to get deals done because these guys are all getting commissions on their sales it's like you you you light a fire under the ass for the people that you're saying you say look guys this is like we have calls lined up for the next 365 days non-stop with a bunch of other high net worth individuals you're lucky i'm calling you today when the price of bitcoin is still below all-time highs. You've seen what's happened in the past 30 days. This is not going to stop. I suggest that you get in now rather than later. And so I think we'll see on data over the next week,

but we had 100,000 Bitcoin swooped up in this first 30 days. The size of Bitcoin ETFs right now is 50% the size of gold ETFs, which we managed to do in 31 days, what took gold 20 years to achieve. So momentum is a real thing. And I think just like us as Retail Experience FOMO, I'm guessing that institutions are going to as well. This is the best performing asset class of the decade, certainly best performing asset class of the last month.

And if you bought the spot Bitcoin ETF at any point in time, you're now at 15% minimum on your investments, which is like in a period of weeks or a month. This is all really good data. So my concern with sitting on the sideline at this point right now is like where could we dip to right 58 000 59 000 before sailor and others come in with another huge buy order um i i think that looking back and i'm in the i'm in the belief that we're gonna see you know minimum 350 to to 600 000 bitcoin and i know that's like not a popular opinion but um i think that we're gonna see but a a peak a all-time high before the halving was a crazy opinion for me

a couple of weeks ago and now it's more and more people are saying it's possible i do so i want to structure the show is i want to dig into bitcoin and just the markets in general and we've got an incredible panel i want to go to, just get an update on the ETF because that's what's obviously driving a lot of that rally. And we've got, let me see the numbers. Yesterday, I think we hit,

yesterday, I think, or the day before? What are we today? I think Monday we hit, we broke record. Ryan, you remember when you kind of got excited during your show? I think it was Friday.

It was Friday. And then got excited, that volume. And I think yesterday again, half a million. Yesterday broke a record too. Yeah, exactly. Broke it. Exactly. That's insane. So we've got ryan here too perfect incredible panel so yesterday uh friday ryan just kind of interrupts the show he's like guys uh we just got

whatever hundreds of millions of dollars of inflows in two hours and then someone corrected him it's like ryan it's actually volume but then ryan ryan kind of ringing the alarm was actually true because we broke records i think on friday and, maybe even yesterday, in terms of trading volume when it comes to the ETFs. And BlackRock is – not BlackRock. Grayscale is at record low inflows yesterday, I think it was, the day before, two days ago. And yesterday, it was 125 million, kind of picked up a bit. Net inflows for ETFs is 576 million yesterday. And we're over 6 billion, I think 6.5 billion.

Remember, Ryan, before we go to Matt and Ryan, it's incredible to have Bitwise always on stage giving us updates. Great to have you communicating with the community, guys. But, Ryan, you were talking about, hey, if we hit 5 billion in the first three months, that would be an incredible success. We're at $6.5 billion, and I don't know how many weeks in we are so far, but definitely well below three months. Your thoughts on that, Ryan, and then we'll go to Matt and Ryan to get an ETF update. My feeling, when we first spoke, we said that if we get anything between $5 billion and $10 billion, it wasn't only me.

It was me, James, all the analysts. We were on here and we said if we can get $10 billion, we said after three months, that would be extreme success. We're now one month and one week later. And one month and one week later, we're one month and three weeks later. So one month and three weeks later, and we've got ourselves six and a half or nearly 7 billion of net inflows. I mean, that's beyond anybody's wildest expectations. Let me go to Matt, Ryan.

What were your expectations? Give us some figures and what do you expect to see? Because things are pretty insane. And also I want to ask you a question. Who are these ETFs buying those Bitcoins from? And what's that liquidity going to do? Is that going to enter alt in your opinion? Is that going to lead to the altcoin rally led by institutions, by the ETFs getting into the market?

Bunch of great questions. Yeah, I mean, as mentioned. Ryan, are you there? Oh, hold on. Maybe it's a glitch. Can anyone hear Matt? Again. Can anyone hear Matt? Again. Can anyone hear Matt?

You guys can hear me. Oh, you can. Oh, cool. So what I'll do, Matt, is I'm going to be rude and remove you and bring you back up so I can hear you because we had that glitch yesterday. Ryan, I'll let you jump in first and I'll bring Matt. I'll just take an invite to come up again just so I can hear you. It's a bit of a glitch.

Go ahead, Ryan. Sure. Great. Can you hear me? Yes. Awesome. Yeah, great to be here. Really obviously happy with how the Bitcoin ETFs have performed and the traction they've seen.

I think the people buying these ETFs, there's kind of two different paths. There's the retail traders that weren't accessing crypto through things like Coinbase. A lot of people thought that retail already had access to Coinbase or in other trading exchanges and applications. So they wouldn't use a ETF to allocate. I don't think that's true. I actually know a lot of people who manage their investment portfolio through brokerages and standard trading platforms who started allocating to Bitcoin ETFs once they became available in January. And so I think you have retail traders that are allocated, but perhaps they're just too

lazy or you need that stamp of approval or that validation to see it in their TD Ameritrade screen before they started buying it. But what we're seeing out on the road talking to advisors and RAs is that they're just starting to make those allocations. So I was in a meeting yesterday out in Denver with an an ra that manages 350 million in assets and they are still learning what what bitcoin is there was maybe one or two people that were pretty well versed on it but a fertile skeptic and it's companies like or you know firms like that ra is like that we're still getting up to speed who have yet to even start allocating client assets into these etfs so you know and then there's financial advisors on platforms like Morgan Stanley, who, or Vanguard, right, who haven't actually started allocating because they can't, the platform won't allow them to do that. And so they simply can't do

it for compliance reasons. And so today, we're certainly seeing RAs and financial advisors allocating. That's a large part, I'm sure, of what's driving these assets up. But I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg. And it's going to take a year before we really see the impact these have. And that might sound crazy, given what's happening with the price and what's happening with the flows. But that just shows how big of an unlock these ETFs are. And I think we have a lot of room to go under the surface. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Matt, I'd love your take and kind of link it to the question I asked you earlier. Where are these ETFs buying all that Bitcoin from? Where are these inflows coming in? Where

will they go next? They're buying Bitcoin from other Bitcoin holders. With Bitcoin holders getting that fiat, those stables, what will they do with those? Could that rotate into alts? And also, that's question number one. And question number two is, we're just getting started, as Ryan said, and retail hasn't entered the market, and we're already near all-time highs. I'm generally, as rarely do you see me that bullish, but I'm just, from just looking at the numbers alone, it's just hard to be bearish right now. Yeah. And I'm trying to be level-headed. It's really hard to be bearish. Hopefully, you i'm trying to be level-headed it's it's really hard to be bearish hopefully you can hear me now i mean i i posted this early

matt it's a glitch so just uh uh kyle i can't hear matt so i'll let you just moderate after anything he's saying go ahead matt is matt on stage no he just dipped out coming back we could hear kyle mario i think anyone there is anyone speaking i can hear matt mario can you hear me oh sorry okay matt is glitching from i can't even see matt on stage i'm gonna go quiet before he dropped out i'm gonna go quiet let you guys kind of leave the room and i'll take over in a bit simon were you saying something uh do you want to i think mario can't hear so do you want to go Kyle do you want to carry on yeah yeah go ahead

let me try to bring him back up Matt just messaged me and said that he's trying to rejoin so hopefully he can get back in Mario do you hear me all this time was anyone speaking in the last few seconds we can hear you can you hear us it was quiet I Yeah, Mario. It was quiet. We can hear you.

Can you hear us? Well, okay, shit. It was quiet the last – I knew it. I thought I was the one who can't hear him, and I'm sitting there quietly, awkwardly. So just for the audience, you're not alone. It was quiet now. So let me get to the next – let me get other thoughts first on just the markets in general before we dig into alts and the altcoin market, along with different narratives.

Alex, pleasure to have you again. We've got a perfect alex from galaxy as well um and we've got dave alex your thoughts on what's been discussed so far and you know is it possible to even play devil's advocate looking at all the numbers all the metrics yeah i mean i think if you are a trader and you look at the move we've had it's it looks like mini parabolic in the last couple days so. So like, it's, do you, if you're trying to time the market, then, you know, I can agree with, I think what Rand said earlier, that it's, it might be hard if you're that type of shorter term trader to buy right at this moment when we're pressing, you know, multi-year highs. But I totally agree with the sentiment and I've,

and I'm, I've just, I sent a note to clients. I tried to publish it long form on Twitter. I'm working on now, but I screwed up the X post, but literally called why we're not stopping with S in parentheses, why this isn't the top, basically. per conservative portfolio. It was a back test, mathematical showing that if you had done 28%, that was where their quant model showed you would have done the best. And also Fidelity is not making any recommendations. That's Fidelity Canada, which is a wholly separate company. So that only has 42 billion AUM. But the point does stand, those model portfolios and stuff are coming. There are restrictions on whether or not advisors can sell these yet. These are currently on an unsolicited basis, right? So it takes time before advisors can actually go out and sell the ETF. So that hasn't happened yet. And advisor platforms haven't

mostly turned on, including the banks and VDs. I know Ryan mentioned like Morgan Stanley and those guys, they have seasoning periods and compliance to go through. So I think there's plenty of room to run when you see the demand that we've been seeing primarily, almost exclusively through retail brokerage platforms.

Now that doesn't just mean like everyday people, high net worths, family offices, hedge funds can all buy on like fidelity.com and Schwab, right? But it is not the full institutional unlock that is going to come to these ETFs yet. Mario, you've also been asked, so I think there's, I mean, frankly, I just think there's plenty of room to run. You're going to see a constant drip over the next three

to 18 months of RIAs, wealth management platforms, banks, and BDs announcing that their advisors can now put clients into these ETFs. So those headlines will be catalyzing, but the headlines themselves are a story of new access. So they also can unlock flows. So we have not topped. I think it's fair to ask that question given that we're only 8% off all time high right now. And 52 days prior to the having the last two times, we were basically still 60% below those prior all-time highs. So this time does look different, but let's be real. It is different. And the other point, Mario, you've been asking about like the rotation to alts.

I do think, and I'm not saying it won't happen. In fact, obviously we've seen many ones happen several times already in this cycle. But I do think that the Bitcoin ETFs, and if we get these ETFs that will be sort of similar, they will dampen the intra-crypto cyclicality, rotations that we've seen historically, because these assets are much stickier when you own Bitcoin in an ETF. And even more so if your advisor put you into it in an advised portfolio, your Bitcoin is not sitting on Coinbase ready to be moved into the very next alts, right? It's much stickier. It'd be much harder to pull it out. So I actually think we will see the intra-crypto rotational trade dampen like over time as these bitcoin etfs grow i think if you get the eth etfs then maybe you'll see some rotation between bitcoin and eth but like in their final form these etfs will be largely used for longer term investment and so they're much less likely it's going to reduce they're much less likely to rotate and seek the next you know 10 50 and instead will be part of

a rebalancing period so like i volatility will come down when volatility comes down and market cap increases you're going to be able to get bigger and bigger investment into bitcoin um so i don't think we're close to the top but i know it does feel it feels a bit euphoric this morning yes simon yeah there is um i mean even outside the u.s you guys are more like u.s sensitive um there's a really strange market happening right now so take jurisdictions like the uk you can't buy the etf in the uk and you've got you got people with sips people with pensions people like not you know breaking down the doors of their brokers and saying, you made me miss this 10%. You made me miss this 20%.

You know, why is the FCA saying that they've got all these crypto regulations, but we can't buy the ETF? So there's a lot I'm seeing, particularly in the UK, a lot of ETF FOMO. And then if you're trying to think of it, how it relates to the alt market, I think those that already are comfortable owning Bitcoin or have been in the market for a while, they're kind of looking for the more speculative, they understand the cycle. So they're looking to try and get their pumps and dumps still. And outside of the U.S., all of the other alternative crypto assets are a lot more regulatory clarity. It's all done through virtual asset service providers. These exchanges are now subject to audit requirements. All of those regulatory regimes for the crypto market, as it were, is very clear outside the u.s you've got the european regulations that's

you know gone completely into how to deal with market manipulation how to deal with exchanges how to deal with self-custody how to deal with all of the different regimes so you know you've got like a real bitcoin driven market in the u.s where the u the US is able to just really easily buy their ETFs at the moment. The rest of the world isn't that easy to buy their ETFs, but they've got a lot of clarity on the self-custody and buying Bitcoin on an exchange or cold storage. So you've just got those different dynamics that are coming in the international markets. Yeah, Dave, I'll get to you in just one second. I want to ask a question, though, either Alex or Simon, either of you guys, you could answer.

So, Alex, you said that right now, and this is what I've been saying, too, is that right now we mostly see high net worth individuals, family offices that are participating. But what you just said, I wasn't aware of, that registered investment advisors weren't yet allowed to come and buy the ETF. And you said there was cyclical rotations on which these things happen. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? They are allowed to, but they're not allowed to solicit their clients at the moment. I think Ryan or Matt, if he's back, they probably know a bit more about this than me. But to actually go out and sell these things proactively is different than if you have it on your platform or you're able to and your clients ask for it from a regulatory perspective. Maybe somebody else like Dave or somebody I see Dave raising his hand. But that's what I was referring to, Kyle. Dave, go for it thank you yeah if you can dave sorry dave if you could do one thing as well i just dropped out for the last few minutes since alex spoke till now i haven't heard

anything so i'll let you answer the question and maybe just give it one two sentence recap because you're really good at doing this of what was said earlier if that's okay for me and the audience everyone that joined in the last few minutes yeah sure i mean look, the fact is, the TLDR and the conversation is, this is happening, assets are flowing in from new pools of capital, and a huge percentage of that capital is still not able to buy. And the fact of the matter is, we know, I'm sorry for the fact of the matter repetition, but we know, I mean, this is not new, that the market for Bitcoin and crypto in general is small compared to the financial markets as a whole. It is essentially, we all said the ETFs were like the Netscape IPO moment, you know, for crypto. And we're seeing it play out. And we're

seeing it play out more optimistic than any of us thought. I mean, look, I was wildly optimistic, but not this optimistic that it would be this early. The fact is, there's just not enough supply at these prices. But then again, most of the people who are holding, keep in mind, most of the people who are holding believe that Bitcoin will, at a minimum, rival gold in market capital, which still is a 10x from here. So the fact is, is it's hard to look at Bitcoin in any way as a bubble when it's still one tenth of where most of the holders think it's going to go. And that's what we always have to remind ourselves. Now, that all said, we're seeing a cycle and we're seeing a cycle with new money coming in and crypto hot money rotating into

stuff like, look at WorldCoin. I mean, I don't know, my eyeball's never going to be on that orb. I don't know about you guys. But, you know, it's hard for me to believe that that's going to be the next big thing. But who knows? There's a lot of those stories throughout the market. And so we are starting to see some leverage. But that's basically what's been said. But the point that I want to make is this feels very, very similar to me. Now, I have the benefit of being old and having lived through it on a trading desk. But the fact is, it's very similar to the early stages of the blow off top in the internet bubble. And, you know, you can compare Bitcoin, Bitcoin really is

kind of outside that because of what I just said. But when you look at the entire crypto complex, it feels a lot like that days, you know, day after day after day of seeming euphoria. Eventually, you end up getting the pinprick. It goes kaboom and then the wheat rises from the chaff. You know, I tweeted about this this morning. Ari David Paul made a good tweet. I responded to it or quoted. I can't remember which. But that's what's going on. We're seeing rotations and the volume and the interest is there. But the other point that has to be made, Mario, is we're not seeing real retail pile into the crypto world. It's piling in via the Charles Schwab accounts and the Fidelity accounts. I want your thoughts on this

as well. And we do have Joel Ranch is trying to come up, but we've got Kyle as well. So I do want to discuss the altcoin market. We did a, just for the audience, we did a space just before this, like a launch space for Bebo, which me and Ryan are invested in. It's a Web3 social platform. And just we're watching the price live. We're doing Portal tomorrow, which is in the gaming space. I'm pretty bullish on them. We're doing a launch space for them. And, you know, looking at the markets, they're starting to froth up.

And we're going to go through it kyle will be good to get your thoughts on as well you've been through more bull markets than i have and i think uh rad as well run around me and right about the same but you've been through more bull markets than both of us so kind of going through the early stages of this bull markets moving away from bitcoin and relative to previous bull markets but let's go to doug first your thoughts on the discussion so far maybe you can even answer the question i've just posed to kyle yeah i think it's uh right like the question of who's who sold bitcoin over the past since the etfs right probably crypto natives who are holding it through the uh the bear market and the question is right like where where are those funds flowing to my

guess is it's probably shiny new coins, right? Like we saw StarkNet token come out. It's holding $20 billion, even though it's not. It's probably the fourth largest L2 on Ethereum, right? You have EigenLayer, tons of money getting locked into that in anticipation of the airdrop. Athena came out $500 million like in the first day locked in there. So I think probably this rotation, you might see some of the,

some of the alts before even each, right? Like Mike had skipped over, especially of all these bankruptcy estates with, with overhangs. So that's kind of a, it's kind of a kind of cloud over the alts. So my guess is probably shiny new coins this cycle, pump a lot, and maybe kind of the alts that were here last cycle might lag behind. But it's a good question, right? Like, where do the marginal sellers of Bitcoin rotate their money to? Simon, I'm going to go back to you in a bit. But Kyle, let me try to get Ryan back up. It's glitching for him. But we were talking earlier, so you do have a launchpad as well,

so you'll probably get more insight than I do. But we've been talking about token launches. We're seeing the same cycle repeat itself, where you just get a few narratives getting hyped up. Obviously, now we've got gaming, which I'm extremely bullish on, AI, less bullish on, and then what's lagging deep in RWA. They're a bit lagging. L2s. But let's just focus on gaming and AI.'s lagging deep in RWA is a bit lagging, L2s.

But let's just focus on gaming and AI. You've got narrative-led token launches. You've got token launches that do not be able to say today did a 15x on launch. Obviously, just for anyone listening, it's 15x on private rounds, which are locked up. Anyone doesn't know how it works and how the VC model works. We had Pixels a few days ago do over 100x, which we've hosted. We're hosting Portal tomorrow, which have had almost $10 billion staked so far, which I think is a record. It's insane numbers, more than the GDP of some countries.

So the froth is starting, but then a lot of people would look at this and say, holy shit, 10x, 15x, 100x. But then if you compare it to the last bull market, it just shows that it's very, very early. And the last bull market was just ridiculous, just dumb money. We have like three, four projects a day doing a 10x. So maybe tell us about the VC, the state of the VC markets and how these projects, these startups are doing. You also see it much easier to raise money now. VCs are deploying again. And you're seeing valuations starting to come up on projects as well. Like, you know, for a project to raise it at $60 or $100 million valuation six months ago was pretty crazy, unless it was like a big one backed by the biggest tier ones. But now we're starting to see seed rounds coming out with like, with like products, but you know, at seed rounds at 60 million. So valuations are starting to come up. We're still very cautious on being valuation sensitive and, and cliff and vesting sensitive as well. You know, we, we,

we are very aware that this could be a, an accelerated cycle where, you know, we have 12 to 18 months from now until maybe we get a correction. There's also the, there's also a theory that maybe we don't get a huge correction, you know, because of what was said earlier,

a lot of these guys are buying Bitcoin and holding it. That's, that's predominantly what's been leading this, but we'll see how insane things get when alts come in. But, but yeah, so we are seeing a lot of projects because i invested and i think mario you too and ran and scott everyone we all invested

in a lot of projects toward the second half of last bull run that still haven't launched a token yet and everybody now is like lighting up for march april may launches and how's the how's the how's it just sorry to interrupt you but how's the, how's the, how's the, just sorry to interrupt you, but how's the quality of the projects now? Are we going to have the same cycle repeat itself? You've seen better quality projects this time around. And just for the record, Kyle does have a launchpad called Paid Ignition, which me, Ryan and Scott are all partnered with.

And, you know, I've looked at your projects in previous bull runs. You've had a few, a few successes, but the projects you have this time around just seem a lot more mature are we going to see the same shitty projects that have a cool story raise a fuck ton of money or you know investors are being a lot more diligent this time around well you know i think that um last time when we launched paid ignition it was it was i mean our our launch when pokestarter did 125x or something like that for and that was the like this kind of like i think poca starter had a great launch and then us a few weeks later and then we launched a couple projects aos aos and shop x that did like 300x and 250x or something

from ideal prices and that kind of was in the beginning. That was in February, March 2021, really getting toward kind of that parabolic 2021. And we're not there yet, I guess, as far as timing is concerned. But the point is, is that we launched the launchpad in the middle of kind of a hype cycle where everything was just, it didn't matter. Everything was pumping.

And so everybody was making money on these projects and everyone was happy for it. Right. And so now we've launched a bit earlier than that super frothy moment. And we've also, from a personal perspective, we scaled up a lot on the professional resources. You know, since then we've launched, you know an uh a an lp fund with you know really good analysts from like mazari and state street bank and other places and we've we've been much more diligent on our on our own due diligence as well and so we're we're trying to it's a fine line between meeting demands of like because honestly retail don't really care about the quality of a project if it pumps

we've seen that a couple times already um and i'll tell you also i'm starting to start to see scams coming up again too like um so there's i i just saw one earlier that's it's claims to have a the building their own decentralized proprietary large language model and they have a beta up on it and i went and asked the beta I said which LLM model are you using and it said I'm using GPT-4 I'm like oh very proprietary here so it's

so we're starting to get that to come again so we're going to be it's a fine line between listening what's going to pump and what's quality but this time around we're focusing more on quality and joe i want to go to you before going we've got a pretty good big panel so i do want to go to alex after you joe because i couldn't hear him earlier and ask him a few questions but you're just kind of focusing on alice you know lunar crush you've got your

analytics platform which is also um we're partners with i don't know about kyle i think scott would partners me and scott partners in um and you know know, we'll be doing a show together on Spaces and on YouTube because you're pretty deep in the altcoin market. So looking at the data and maybe touching on meme coins, Ryan talked about it in his show. It's something I don't understand well at all. He's saying that meme coins are pumping again. Is that, you know, how does that compare to previous bull markets?

Can that be used as an indicator along with the fear and greed index? Maybe giving us an update on this bull market versus the last few markets and how is that rotation progressing? Yeah, and I can just touch a little bit on everything that we've been talking about, starting with just, you know, Google Trends. So Google Trends, you know, is not a great indicator. It's just such a small sample size from Google. And it's not based on the pure number of interactions. But all this is, yes, it's driven by Bitcoin. I think every alt rally is driven by Bitcoin originally. The inflows are unbelievable. It's an outrageous, bullish setup that I don't know if any of us have seen in our existence. And I've been here since 2015.

And that being said, you know, the rotation into alts, it's happening. You know, I don't know, Nick, the term, you know, the future is here. It's just not evenly distributed. You know, you're seeing, you know, Bitcoin in the last six months, you know, it's up 134%, Ethereum up 100%. Then below that would be Arbitrum at 100%, BNB at 89%, Matic 88%, and then you've got Dogecoin at 58%. But then above that line, you've got things like Chainlink up 230% versus Bitcoin 130%. You've got Avalanche up 300%. You've got Solana up 450%. Then Stacks, which is a little bit more narrative driven with Bitcoin and Bitcoin L2 is up 568%. And then you've got kind of outstanding narratives with AI with something like a BitTensor that's up 1000%. So there has been a uneven rotation into what's going on.

And I just do not think we're going to see the same type of exact rotation. And when Coinbase has the number of app downloads that we all think it's going to have, this is going to end. There's just too much demand on Bitcoin. And I think there's too many smart people that are also searching and figuring out how to get to these other chains. You know, you couldn't hold Bitcoin in a browser wallet the last time we were in a bull market. You can now. You can bridge that to different chains in an easy way. And so I think it will leak into other places. You know, and that being said, you know, I did pin a little post up top here, you know to January of 2020, we've looked at the market at Lunar Crush. We pull in social media data from X, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, all the news. We're pulling in over 20 million posts every single hour across these networks. We've looked at Bitcoin. We've got the longest data set out there. Bitcoin is unbelievable. I couldn't believe this when I opened it this morning. Bitcoin is at an all-time low for social dominance. So when you look at market dominance, I think

everyone knows what that means. It's whatever Bitcoin's market cap is versus the rest of the market. At Lunar Crush, we look at social dominance, and it's literally one of the lowest it's been since we started to collect data. So it's just an unbelievable bullish setup that's out there. On that point, Alex, I want to go to you on that point. We've seen Bitcoin dominance at 54%, and we've seen the social dominance being so low. Is that kind of reaffirming that, first, the Bitcoin ecosystem is sick. We're investing heavily in that ecosystem.

You sound like you're in a fan. Yeah, he's almost done though. I could hear the question. I need a new headset. Oh no, now you sound good. Yeah, I'll just use the headset. By the way, all these members keep attacking me in the comments every time the headset glitches. I'll get a new one, just ease up on me. But Alex, the Bitcoin dominance is at 54%, yet social dominance is really low. What does what does that mean for you again does it just reaffirm retail hasn't entered the market

yeah and uh this is bitcoin season like i think bitcoin is leading this bull market i think that will continue i would love your thoughts on the rotation narrative that we're talking about yeah happen again i mean it's a really interesting point i google trends is just like one of the easier ones to find but i think joe's obviously very right that it's a limited data set. It doesn't have social media or anything. And also like someone else made this point earlier, but who is going at this point in 2024 just being like, let me Google Bitcoin. Like that's a very like the first time you hear it kind of thing to Google.

So like I don't think there's a lot of people who know what it is already, but they may not be interested in the market. They don't necessarily need to go Google the word Bitcoin. Um, I look, I just want to, because it tails on, uh, what was just said before, uh, another barometer that I was using, um, at my show yesterday was, uh, Reddit and, um, how many, how many posts, not in the Bitcoin, but cryptocurrency. So like our cryptocurrency forums. And in 2021, there was hundreds of thousands of posts per day.

And if you look right now, you're seeing just thousands of posts per day. And so that's another barometer. Are people still going to Reddit to talk about cryptocurrency? Probably, right? That's kind of like where normies or no-coiners hang out, I would guess. Another barometer, you know, are people still going to Reddit to talk about cryptocurrency? Probably. That's kind of like where normies or no-quinters hang out, I would guess. So just one more barometer.

I think that's right. I think the real question, like there is obviously retail presence in the market. But when we say that, I think when we talk about like, are they here yet? I think what we really mean is like, are the Robin hood day traders here is wall street bets trading crypto now, which if you remember like the, the vibes of the late bull market, you know, two, three years ago was like, we're not feeling those vibes yet. We're not close to Mario to your question about like all it's, I mean, I think they've,

they've performed pretty well in the scheme of things, but it is a Bitcoin driven market right now the question is does this cycle play out similarly to others whenever it is that bitcoin uh tops would would then you see like eth top and then all stop after it and you know i think the clearest time that happened was 17 and early 18. um but we've seen it when bitcoin has gone sideways some of these times, literally since August, they've had many like altcoin rallies. But I was arguing earlier, I think when you couldn't hear just that I think the ETF, the Bitcoin ETFs will dampen that sick that intra crypto rotation trade in general, as they gain more AUM and more of Bitcoin supply, because

those that Bitcoin, the Bitcoin that's in the ETFs, especially if they're in an advisor managed account, is much stickier than Bitcoin on a crypto exchange, which can be easily exchanged for alts, right? So I'm not saying you won't see it. And of course, the point was also made, I think maybe by Simon, that this is a US-centric view, but the US is by far the biggest capital market so wherever it ends whether i'm not saying they won't happen but i do think that impulse in the market will dampen the bigger the bitcoin etfs get and it may even dampen further if the eth etfs are approved because between the two obviously market cap they're you know almost all of the market in

the scheme of things but also even if even if you take Bitcoin and Ethereum, they kind of cover the majority of the narratives in the market, right? I mean, we can make arguments about things you can do on Sol or other types of blockchains that you can't do on ETH. But, you know, NFTs, DeFi, tokenization, ETH can be an outlet to express a view there. So if those two were approved, honestly, it would be truly game-changing for the altcoin markets. But we're not there yet. I just think overall it will dampen.

One more question to you, Alex. And as he's time with his hand up, I do want to go to Chris, Ryan and Doug afterwards and Kyle, as you jump in. So before going to the rest of the panel, I've got one more question for you, Alex. And Joe, I do want an update on the NFT market because I was talking about it and asked my team yesterday. I'm not deep in the NFT market, but it seems to be lagging as well. So maybe if you've got some metrics, it will be great. But Alex, Mike Novogratz did say that we're already at price discovery for Bitcoin. Can you elaborate on that point and whether you'd agree? Yeah. I mean, if you look, we were not over 60K for very long, I think is where Mike's coming from in 2021. That is, um, you know, even then, like when I pull the, whatever the top price was on, um, November 8th, 2021, we closed at like 67. We,

so we 69, which we regularly sort of call us the top is, is a very brief intraday wick on that candle. And even then we came down pretty fast into the low sixties. So I think that's where what he's thinking is that like, you know, once you get into the low 60s so i think that's where what he's thinking is that like you know once you get into like 61 to like 64 like that basically is the prior all-time high for all intents and purposes simon yeah i was just gonna say um if you if you think about all of the flows right now simon so i'm gonna be very respectful removing and bring you back up anyone that's blaming me in the audience for this i'm going through the comments it's not my end it's a glitch within twitter um so respectful, remove you and bring you back up. Anyone that's blaming me in the audience for this, I'm going through the comments. It's not my end.

It's a glitch within Twitter. So I'm just going to bring you back up. I do want to go to David. I see you had that, but I want to go to Ryan as well. Ryan, one thing that was mentioned in previous spaces, Simon, please request I bring you back up. There you are. First, Ryan, question. One assumption that we've been going off is that TradFi is focused on Bitcoin, and they're not going to be as speculative, or they're not going to FOMO like us crypto peeps do, or as retail does.

But then other panelists on stage said, no, Murray, TradFi are just as degenerate as we are. How can TradFi start to FOMO? How could they start gambling? And do you agree with that point that they could be as degenerate as us guys? I think it depends on which sleeve of TradFi you're talking about. Could hedge funds go super degen and start trading all kinds of crazy low market cap altcoins? They certainly could. But I think for the majority of TradFi, there's two reasons why they're not going to go down the market cap list and start trading low market cap, low volume assets.

And if they're managing money on behalf of someone else, they have a fiduciary responsibility to not take on outsized risk relative to what that reward would be relative to other investment options. And so it doesn't really fit their investment profile. For example, when we're on the road talking to advisors, they're barely aware of what Ethereum is. And that's just the reality.

They are learning about Bitcoin. They are trying to understand. And I was literally asked this question yesterday. Why is Bitcoin not a Ponzi scheme? How can the government just shut Bitcoin down? Like that's where we're at on the learning curve and adoption curve for most of the professional

money managers and institutional investors. It's just, it's, you know, a very bullish signal, in my opinion, but it's also the reality. Yeah, it's really crazy.

That's crazy. They don't spend that much money on thinking about it. Alex, I see you're requesting when I bring you up, Kyle, please request a co-host invite

so we have space on stage to bring up Alex who who doesn't think yeah they'll send it to you again you'll get it pop up but alex just for the audience alex is more bearish than all of us so i'd love to have him on stage before going to simon simon's always patient with me doug i'm going to go to you then simon and and david uh doug that same question for you um you know what would you expect uh uh triad for different different parts of TradFi to become more degenerate and start FOMOing into alt? Yeah. Or talk about hedge funds?

I mean, one thing I think that you can see might be an interesting outcome is if the Ethereum ETFs get approved, none of those ETFs have any staking built into them, at least as far as I'm aware of. So, right, like first is Ethereum ETFs, but then, okay, you can start, unlike Bitcoin, right? You have all these staking options with Ethereum, right? So you can have staked Ethereum ETFs, right? You have all these restaking products that are coming out that pack yield on top.

So maybe TradFi doesn't flow into alts directly, but if you have a, you have a restaking yield enhanced Ethereum ETF that gets approved, right, that indirectly creates flows to whatever the native restaking token is there. possibility of how trad five funds end up flowing kind of out the risk curve not not by directly buying all coins but by kind of using ethereum staking type properties to uh to get exposure out the risk curve and that's something right track is very comfortable with it okay I have an asset how can I get how can I get enhanced yield on that asset right that's what kind of Wall Street's bread and butter but you could definitely see that as a possibility where that kind of indirectly pumps all of these new tokens that are kind of in this staking and restaking space.

Even if I can't hear you, I won't remove you. And Kyle, you should get an invite to co-host now because I do want to bring up Alex. Can you hear me now? Okay, cool. Yeah. So using like Dave's analogy, you know, the TradFi are going to see quite correctly that Bitcoin's kind of like the internet and tokens are like the pump and dump stocks of the, you know, 2020 dot com boom and bust. And so if they do that, they'll stay in Bitcoin.

But as they come into Bitcoin, they're pumping the wealth of those that already owned bitcoin outside of an etf you can already see that as there's more and more tokens launching that becomes higher and higher transaction fees which makes people want to stake more and more eth as they can get a cut of that rather than paying the transaction fees. And so the wealthy people that already own Bitcoin, including the VCs that already been involved in the last few cycles, they'll obviously, they'll come into the alt. So pumping their wealth because the Bitcoin ETF trad fires are pumping their wealth is what would be driving a lot of them saying, I'll take 10% of my Bitcoin, which I really don't care about losing,

and see if I can get 100x or 250x and 1000x. And as long as that market's allowed to continue, it would just keep going like that. I'm just trying to get Kyle to co-host. I brought up Alex. Kyle will get a co-host invite. Let me go to David, and then I want to get Alex's thoughts, because, Alex, you were the bearish one in the previous space.

We did the Bebel space, and you were making an argument that you're pretty confident we will not reach an all-time high before the halving, which some of us on stage do agree with that. But, David, thoughts, man? Look at us now. you were through us through the bloodbath you gave us you know we discussed the coinbase case the binance drama um the sec uh sec losses in court and here we are close to all-time highs are you celebrating yet you know it's kind of funny you say that because oh shit i can't hear you david so i'm gonna give the mic to to just the panel just take it over after you uh but go ahead i'm hoping someone can hear me because otherwise i'm just talking to myself but at the end at the end of

the day you know if someone told me a year ago we were going to see the binance the coin the coinbase and all these scc actions and that we were going to be looking at all time highs, I would have been, this is crazy. I was talking to my trainer this morning and he was giving me all this crypto advice. And it kind of reminded me of that scene in the movie when the guys were in the strip club and all the strippers were saying how they owned houses and all these apartments. And the guys were like, well, how much money are you paying? What happens when the arms reset? Like I was sitting there and saying to myself, oh my God, are we in this moment again? And for the first time in my 12 years in crypto, I don't think so. And the only reason I'm cautiously optimistic is what a lot of you guys have been talking about

today, that the financial advisors for the first time are going to be able to sell these products to their clients. And when the financial advisors get in, it's going to open up a second and third spigot that the ETFs haven't really opened yet. And that's that all of these financial advisors are going to be able to start selling the products to their clients with a certain amount of responsibility. And it's important because financial advisors, I don't think they're going to start, TradeFi is not going to allow them in the near future to sell altcoins. They're going to allow them to sell the ETFs. Maybe they're

going to start allowing them to sell some Bitcoin and hold the Bitcoin. We're seeing that happen. But those financial advisors, they're going to have a duty of care to their clients. So all of a sudden, all the younger generation, the people who understand, you know, Dave Weisberger and I are probably of the same ilk of where we view ourselves in the pendulum of life, where we are going to be able to start telling people, oh, you guys now, when you take this financial advice, your financial advisor, they have to have your best interests. They have to seek the best execution for you. They have to advise you and monitor your accounts. And I do think there are spigots for even more money than people are seeing in just the ETFs.

And I think that's a really good sign. That doesn't mean price is just going to skyrocket in my mind, but that just means there's a lot more money still coming into the system mario dave is done if you can't hear him dave so if you're you're talking you know talking shit about me uh please stop but i can't yeah he was just he was just done mario imagine imagine if instead of suing crypto companies he just bought Bitcoin instead that would have been a better choice David you can stop suing

all these actually Dave we should probably speak because what happens in a bull market that we've got one of your friends that's working with us already and won't mention him here on the space but what happens in a lot of us VCs you know cars on stage and and others here that invest in those startups a lot of them you know start getting a bit greedy and start you know breaking breaking staffs breaking the rules thinking they can get away with it in the midst

of the hype not knowing there's legal repercussions and we're going to get that a lot um so we should probably speak david i'm gonna i want to i want to hear your response i'm actually going to bring you down with all respect so i can bring you back up and hear your response to what i just said uh because i know the audience can hear but it's a bit annoying i can't um so as i bring up dave again uh let me go to uh joe and alex alex you're the bear here um so i want to get your thoughts kyle you're not getting the course invite joe we're going to co-host you so I can actually bring up Dave because the panel is full again. Oh, Dave, so I can bring up Alex. So we're going to co-host you.

David, yes, you're forced on what I just said. I thought it was pretty funny. I sort of ran at Satoshi Roundtable in Dubai a couple of weeks ago. And what made me laugh was how many lawyers were at Satoshi Roundtable. I mean, it's like even the lawyers have to do this now. Yeah. I mean, look, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. You know, my my clients, my clients all think they're rich right now. I'm just building up for the next wave of the rug pull. So the rug pull is coming. You know, we've all learned this, whether it's traditional finance or whether it's crypto.

A lot of people think they're rich right now and they're going to learn that their money, their crypto is not as safe as they think it is. You know, it's almost funny. They're not your keys, not your coins. You know, it doesn't apply to the ETFs. That money's safe. But a lot of people are going to end up, you know, thinking they're rich on this bull run and have to call lawyers like me. I am kind of looking forward to that day. It's what leads me to my slight pessimism still that people are always going to be greedy yeah the companies in crypto in 2022 and 2023 were the law firms david you're trying to remember from uh the big short was when mark bomb said what do you mean all your loans we're talking about two loans on one house. And she said something along the lines of, I have five houses and a condo. And I think, you know, it's interesting to be, you know,

I can tell you're still bullish, but to have a little bit of pessimism, you know, when we're not even at all-time highs around Bitcoin, you know, it's like, I think you're starting to see a couple of the, you know, a couple of the friends that you probably have from from high school or college start to message you. But we're still not even close to something along the lines of a real fever pitch in retail. And it's, you know, once I think once Bitcoin is closer to the 125K mark, you know, later this year, then we can maybe have a conversation about that. But at this point, we are just so at the beginning of this run. And even from the altcoin market, I mean, there are so many things that are old that do not have all-time highs yet.

Once we get to, you know, maybe market saturation of all-time highs over 50% that we can have that conversation. Dave, and then we'll go to Alex to kind of get a devil's advocate voice here. Well, I think it's important to look at leverage, right? You know, and everyone, you know, I said this yesterday, I always say it, it's never a straight line. So look, I'm on record as saying all-time highs this year were baked in the cake. I said this famously. You know, Scott could laugh, but, you know, I'm still loading my steak dinner. About 40K, but I was saying, look, you know, we're going higher. I honestly believe that digital gold, the narrative, is coming much sooner than people think. But it's not going to be a straight line.

When you look at the amount of leverage in the system, what actually happens, and so many people do this, is people feel rich, right? So they've made a lot of money, and then they increase the size of their positions as the price goes higher. And they do this again and again. And then, you know, you get somebody who was making a lot of money when Bitcoin went from 40 to 60, and they go, okay, great. Well, now I'm going to have a position that's 5x that because I have all this extra money. And then it goes to 80, and they go, okay, I'm going to do a position that's 5x that because I have all this extra money. And then it goes to 80 and they're, oh, OK, I'm going to do it again. And now it goes from 80 back down to 60 and they lose everything. And you get a lot of people that don't understand this and see that dynamic play out. And that's why we end up getting these large drawdowns along the way.

Now, I don't know when it's going to happen. I don't know where it's going to happen. I agree with the previous speaker. Yeah, we're going to get there into much higher prices. But a lot of people get washed out by playing leverage. And you can kind of watch to see what's going on. The difference this time is it's going to be easier to do it in alts because the trick to a lot of these momentum washouts are a trade where people will go long the spot and short the perpetual swaps, build up a huge position, and then just bombs away the spot because the

perpetual swaps are more liquid. That worked really well for basically every one of these cycles. With the bid that's going on now in the spot market from the ETFs, it is unclear that that trade will work. And so it might make it that it's harder to see those bomb outs. But when that bid goes to the point where there's enough ETF holders that they too can sell, because remember, it's really cheap to sell the ETFs. It's a penny spread and zero commission. When we get to that point, that trade is going to return. And people need to be aware of that. The volatility has not disappeared. We are a long way from the volatility going down. Alex? Yeah. So, yeah, thank you again

for pulling me up here, glitching like crazy. I have to partially agree to what Dave just said. There is so much leverage in the market. Open interest is at all-time highs. It's just in total insanity right now. We definitely need to get that flushed out at some point. When that point comes,

I believe it could potentially be happening in the next 7 to 10 days, like I said on the other space. But until then, we can definitely go higher. Again, do I believe that higher means new all-time high? I don't really believe that, that we are going to hit a new all-time high before we get that flush.

I think we're going to see first that flush and then slowly, gradually going into that new all-time high. So it might be happening before the halving or just after the halving, but that flush is definitely coming in my opinion. So I'm not saying that I'm not trading right now. I'm definitely trading that whole uptrend, but I have definitely all my stop losses set and also tell that to my community. You can trade this upwards move, but be really, really cautious

because we have seen these funding rates not but be really, really cautious because we have seen these funding rates not for a really, really long time. Yeah, and let's get some targets to kind of wrap up the space, targets from the panel and from the audience as well in the comments. Where do you expect to see BTC in the rest of the market by the next pre-halving and then post-halving by end of year. Alex, you want to kick it off? Yeah, sure. So there's a level that I'm looking at. We could touch around 63K pre-halving, in my opinion.

And then after the halving, just after the halving, I think with the pre-halving drop, we might be somewhere in the mid-50s, low-50s. And you expect corrections to be short-lived, as Rand said earlier? Yes, yes. They might be really short-lived. Let's go to Kyle. Where do you see the market? Anyone could jump in next.

Go to Joe and Ryan and the rest of the panel. 75K by having and uh i would say bitcoin around 120 000 at the end of the end of the year and then my my target for top of the market is somewhere between 350 to 500 000 jesus it's hard to imagine a market this uh levels. Joel, Dave, Simon, Ryan. Yeah, you know, the having to think that we're only getting to 63K, you know, we've got 60 days left. I'm looking at, you know, 75, very similar to what Kyle said, and then market top is 225.

Cool. By the way, Simon, there's just someone in the audience that disagrees with what you just said, so I'm just going to like their tweets, grams in the audience in the comments, so you can respond to them. I'm also going through the audience comments, and

I just don't see any number. I haven't seen one number below six figures by the end of the year from anyone yet. It just kind of shows not peak greed, but extreme greed. Dave, Simon, Brian, if you had to speculate, where do you think we'll hit pre-halving and then by end of year? Well, I mean, I think that we their tax bill for 2023 from the stock markets will take risk assets down. And I think that'll pause the rally. But I think before then, we should get to – I think we've got to get somewhere between 75 and 80.

It wouldn't surprise me to see it then trade sideways through the halvings like it always does. And then a pickup to, you know, at the end of the year, I kind of am at the 120-ish kind of range. It's really hard because I think that we are now at a probability, it's got to be like 75% that we're going to see Bitcoin demonetize gold. And so I just don't know when that's going to happen. And the thing is, is every time people start thinking that, what does that mean? That means that the people who are buying it for investment aren't going to sell. And so if the marginal demand keeps up, it could get there a lot faster. I mean, I think Hunter had a tweet which he said 250, yeah, Hunter did, 250k Bitcoin could happen much sooner than most who followed the space for years would imagine. I tend to agree. I just worry about the macro situation because we have a lot of cross currents

going on there. Ryan, Simon. Yeah, I have a little compliance guy on my shoulder saying, making me say that this is my personal opinion and not financial advice. But I think we'll certainly hit new all-time highs in 2024. Going into the year, we predicted we'd hit 88K, which was about, I think, 15% above the previous all-time high. I think a lot of that's going to be driven by the ETF demand. And the halving is definitely a strong narrative. But the actual impact of the halving on the supply and demand dynamics is further out. So I think that the Bitcoin ETFs and the momentum that we're seeing is going to drive us to, I would say, at least $88,000, $90,000. And just before we give the mic to Simon, I do want to point out, I like to overdo it with

disclaimers. We were talking about token launches earlier, me, Kyle, and Joe, and I think Ryan. Just kind of give a heads up, crypto, any investment is going to be risky, and I think Ryan, just kind of give a heads up. Crypto, any investment is going to be risky, and especially when it comes to crypto. Crypto is extremely, extremely risky and speculative. So make sure you do your own due diligence. You see everything pumping. Just remember, in bear markets, the bloodbath is significantly worse than traditional VC industry.

So just kind of a big disclaimer. Bitcoin is risky. Alts are a thousand times riskier. Simon, if of a big disclaimer, Bitcoin is risky, alts are a thousand times riskier. Simon, if you had to speculate, where do you think we'll be pre-harving? I know you hate giving targets, but then you always give targets and you're pretty good at it. And then where do you think we'll be by the end of the year? Because everyone in the audience is just way too bullish. They're starting to get worrying, even though we're extremely early. Yeah, Mario, you know, I'll always give a boring answer to that unfortunately um i would expect new all-time highs this year whether it comes

pre-harving or post-harving um anyone's guess roll the dice um just the comment you asked me to comment on is uh grams on twitter he was just saying that when you stake ETH, the stakers don't get a cut of the gas. The gas is burnt, which drives the price higher, which is correct. It's just maybe I said it in a way that wasn't that clear. That's all it was. Yeah, cool. So no one on stage thinks there's a possibility, or is even close to likely at least, at least 40%, 50%

that we won't hit all-time highs this year? Is there anyone on stage that doesn't think that's possible? Speak now or forever hold you. Outside of a black swan, which is always possible, so everyone always has to keep that in their back pocket. But outside of a black swan, absolutely not. All right, Doug just requested. Let's see if we got one.

I have a big announcement not big a cool announcement to make right after doug gives us his take doug is it what's your prediction and is there any possibility that we don't hit all-time highs this year because i just feel everyone's just way too i guess i i am pretty bullish but i'll lay out the the one bearish case that kind of scares me is uh we have the Mt. Gox liquidations potentially this year. And I think that's up to $10 billion. We also have the government sitting on kind of the seized Bitcoin from way back in the day. And I think that's another $10 billion. So I don't think it's that likely. But if those flows get dumped into the market,

that would be the bearish case where things could get ugly. I don't think it's that likely, but if those flows get dumped into the market, that would be the bearish case where things could get ugly. I don't think for a long time, but for a bit. Cool. On that point, just for the audience, we're going to do a pretty big space tomorrow. So one thing we're starting to do, Carl and Joe and others, and Ryan, I know Ryan doesn't jump on them, Carl and joe jump on them we're starting to do for big projects launching like ones where i'm happy to put my name behind them we're doing like launch uh launch not launch parties but a pre-launch space kind of talking about it doing a countdown for the launch and tomorrow's going to be probably one of the more exciting ones since pixels a few weeks ago which was launched on binance it's called portal coin um which is pretty damn exciting.

As I said, they've had over almost $10 billion staked so far, and they'll be launching tomorrow. I think that's probably one of the more exciting projects we've invested in. So it's going to be tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly what time. The co-founder is part of Rockstar Games, was the head of BD at EA. So it's pretty safe. We've already got 250 plus games signed up.

So disclaimer, we're invested, but disclaimer, I'm extremely bullish on them. So check it out. And yeah, it shows that we're in a bull market. We started doing countdown spaces for token launches, which I've never done before, but they've been pretty fun. It just shows that the bull market is really heating up. It's just getting started.

So be careful, everybody. I think it's an incredible panel. Congrats to all projects building in the Bitcoin ecosystem. You guys are killing it right now. And congrats to everyone. I just want to say one more thing before, just because I think it's interesting. I forgot who it was talking about. Predominantly a Bitcoin and ETH-led bull run,

and then maybe not seeing that capital rotate into alts, and certainly not into mid-caps. But I just can't help but to think that we're going to see new meme coins fly into, and maybe Doge and Shiba become less relevant, but I'm really bullish on Pepe and WIF right now. And I'm also seeing institutional reports being put out on these projects, like actual mechanism capital and good firms putting out their thesis

on why they've invested capital into these themselves. And this takes me back to when I was in New York for part of the last bull run. And I went around New York City asking a bunch of people if they accept Bitcoin or if they have any cryptocurrency. And almost everybody had Shiba and Doge, but most people didn't have Bitcoin or any other coins. That's crazy. That's crazy.

I have zero meme coins. I don't know. Do you have any meme coins in your portfolio, Kyle and Joe? Yeah. You guys are the DJs here. Of course. WIF is now my fifth or sixth largest position just because it's cranked up so much, which is crazy. I mean, I've got Bitcoin as my largest one.

And then like Ethereum and Link are sitting there together. And then maybe Solata. And then you've got WIF. It's like it's a large bag. It's fucking crazy. Yeah. Joel, I asked you earlier a question before we wrap up. Just kind of an update on the, it's kind of going a bit degen.

The update on the NFT ecosystem, which I'm very bullish on. Not only PFPs, I'm average-y bullish, but just gaming NFTs, gaming assets, something I'm extremely bullish on. Do you have any numbers there? I'm not sure if you cover NFTs and Lunar Crush. Yeah, we do. It's definitely more flat. I mean, NFTs are the final rotation. You know, if it's going from Bitcoin to ETH to the rest of the alt market, it's kind of like NFTs go there. But there are some really bright spots. is growing into a pretty solid ecosystem. You know, you can got like Taproot Wizards able to raise $7 million. And you've got things like Onchain Monkey that are moving, you know, that

10,000 PFP collections over to Bitcoin. And so, you know, you just see it, you're seeing a lot of growth and building over there. And then you're also seeing tokens launched into the Bitcoin ecosystem that are derived from a lot of the nft projects so you're seeing a lot of building over there you know there's been some controversy with kevin rose and uh board api club and you know i just think that what happened what's the what's the country i've been keeping up i don't what's the controversy with kevin rose i don't know the whole story i know he's like on he might be on the board now or like moonbirds was bought by them i don't know the full story.

I got to look into it. I just saw some stuff flying back and forth on X last week. We should get David Silver up. Yeah, you should ask. Send them his way. But it's just the narrative is not there like right now for that. But, you know, that again, like, you know, everyone in the industry, the reason Twitter is quiet right now is we're all about to fly or are in Denver for ETH Denver. And it's going to be one of the biggest, craziest things.

You know, I think last time I was talking to my co-founder, John, I think, you know, Ethereum was at like 1600 for the last one. And it was just like, you know, everyone's looking around, walking around, staring at their feet. This time it's going to be

a whole different world. And so, you know, ETH is still going strong. Yeah, so just I'm looking at CryptoPunks, their floor is almost at 200K, but it is lagging the rest of the market. One area that I'm very bullish on that I think is just really underrated right now is in-game NFTs, which I know they're hard to value. Not every gaming asset is going to increase in value. It just depends on what the asset's utility is. But I think that's an ecosystem that's really being ignored. I think there's a lot of attention being placed on PFPs. Are you seeing any movement in

volumes when it comes to in-game assets? I haven't seen it yet. Not really. But going into the last, at the end of the last bull market into the bear market, we were seeing and we interviewed a lot of folks on Linter Crush Live that were, we were seeing and we interviewed a lot of folks on the intercrush live that were, you know, there were studios being set up for just tokenomics on in game. And there's just so many people are bullish on it. It's always seems like a very natural fit for NFTs and in game.

It's just, I don't know what the, we haven't had like the killer app yet. And there's always this kind of like push and pull back of like, well, if you have a killer game, why do you need a token involved at all? And, you know, so it's always kind of a push and pull there. But at some point, you know, someone will figure out the killer out there and it's going to fit. I'm going to do a major. Kyle, go ahead. I'll mention like a big announcement that will probably hype it up tomorrow that involves Kyle, Scott and Joe.

But go ahead, Kyle. Yeah, I think that like so one thing that in-game assets is really interesting. I made a big investment into big time, these spaces or this land, you know, in the bear market. And when they launched their token and it went to a multi-billion dollar market cap, I was really upset that we didn't get any of that. But I do have someone managing the rentals of these things, and they're generating really good revenue. I'm talking like almost a month. So they're doing quite well. And then, of course, I think what you're alluding to,

I've also purchased a pretty significant amount of these Gunzilla validators. And I think that i'm most bullish on on gunzilla from any game the way that they've abstracted the the uh web3 side from the end users um you know yeah we can talk about it more tomorrow but uh yeah they figured they figured it out right they think i want to yeah yeah it's tomorrow is not the gun is a major announcement i'll make is is um so first gunzilla we should do a gaming space. I'll probably do it. Tomorrow we have Raoul Paul joining us.

So he's going to be our special guest tomorrow. But after tomorrow, we'll do a gaming space because I'm extremely bullish on that. But Joe, Kyle, I'd love you guys

to keep joining and doing a DGN segment throughout and at the end just because obviously we're not starting to see the entire ecosystem get traction. Also, Joe,

me and Joe will be doing a show on Scott. So first we've partnered with Scott. I'll announce it tomorrow more publicly. But me and Scott partnered. We've acquired a very, very big stake in his show. We're going to scale the Wolf of Wall Street on YouTube and podcast. One of my favorite shows has been for years.

And then Joe is going to be doing a show with us and show with Scott. That's going to be focused along with Lunar Crush. You should check it out and check out the Lunar Crush platform, Lunar Crush. You see on his profile, he's got all this data when it comes to ALTS and NFTs and meme coins. So we're going to do a show together where we focus on that. And Carl already has an incredible show focusing on ALTS and just different narratives. And we've also partnered with Carl's – we're about to partner with carl's launchpad everyone knows ignition paid ignition is one of the the biggest launch pads in the last bull market

and they've built a lot um this time around so they're going to be our preferred launchpad partner uh for this bull market so just you know happy news all around and we'll see we'll talk maybe doing more on the media side with carl but she been, it's an incredible start to the bull market. And, you know, we'll see everyone tomorrow for the portal launch, probably the most hyped project in years. Not probably, the most hyped project in years. I'll see you again tomorrow for the Crypto Town Hall.

Hopefully, you can hang me for it. Hopefully, we'll see a bloodbath because I think we all agree we didn't have enough time to prepare for this bull market. So we need time to prepare. I thought I was ready, but I wasn't. I wasn't.

By the time me and Kyle were starting to talk about our finalizing a partnership, Bitcoin was almost half the price, and it is now. A few weeks later, we doubled. So it's just been pretty crazy. But congrats on everyone that's in the markets, and good times ahead, but also be very, very vigilant and careful. I hope we won't see any black swan events. Thanks a lot, everyone.

And thanks for the incredible panel that joined us today. See you guys. Thank you. Bye, everyone.