The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Bull, Hits 38k, Makes New Yearly High | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

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Hey, Scott. What's up, man? Happy Thanksgiving. You too, man. I saw, I posted about Thanksgiving. I posted a video or a photo, a photo of the, no, a video of the traffic. I don't know if you saw a tweet. Yeah, on the 405.

That's just like 8 p.m. on a Tuesday in L.A. any day. So it doesn't matter. I'll ask you guys if it's really all worth it i had no idea i knew thanksgiving is big i'm not a christmas guy i'm not any any holiday i'm not even new year's guy but i was i was talking to someone one of my team members in the state when we did the tweet i'm like you know is thanksgiving bigger than christmas he said yes

is it really that big well to some i don't think it's bigger than but it's a agnostic holiday for all americans as opposed to being religious right so there's a huge swath of people in the united states that don't celebrate christmas but they celebrate thanksgiving i should wait for rand to connect yeah what's the market like now i know we hit 38K. We can't retrace since then when I checked in the morning, my morning. Yeah, I mean, looking pretty strong. I think we had that one little dip around the Binance news the other day. And now I think trading at 37,900-ish, like you said, tapped 38,000. So I would say continued strength.

I think the market is absorbing most of the quote- quote unquote bad news and realizing maybe it's good news. But I mean, this is a low liquidity, low volume time. This is peak holiday nonsense. So hard to read too much into it, I think, at the moment. But it's great to see that we're just hanging out here at $38,000. We've talked about how important that level is multiple times, mostly just because that's where Bitcoin was trading before the Luna collapse. So it sort of symbolically erases all the contagion of last year by starting to trade above that price. So it would be really

nice to see this push. I wouldn't be surprised to see a quick pop to $40,000 at this point. Pretty small. Before we kick off the show, why is Ryan not connecting? Does he have that turning little wheel for you? Yeah, he's got the spinning wheel. Karma has decided Ran shouldn't be on the show today.

I love Karma. Let me give a quick shout-out. I brought up Sandra. I know I always give shout-outs to Hello Labs, but Sandra, I just want to bring you up quickly. We've talked about your show, The Killer Whales, which is like a Shark Tank show. Talk about the production quality, me and Ran on there. Maybe Scott will be on there soon.

But when is it coming out, Sander? Maybe a quick update for the audience. Hey, good morning, good afternoon. Yeah, thanks for bringing me up, Mario. Cool to be here again. Yeah, we're working nonstop on the distribution and making sure that we have the biggest reach possible and in the space and and and outside of that so i happen to announce that on february 8th 2024 we'll be um launching the show on the hello tv platform and really really quickly after that,

we're going to go to a lot of major streamers. But yeah, we'll definitely announce more on that in the coming weeks. So yeah, keep your eyes open and ears to the ground. I also heard the news that Ryan is banned permanently from the show. Not sure if you guys told him yet. I haven't told him. Crazy. I heard that too. Wow.

What did he do? I heard guys told him yet. I haven't told him. Crazy. I heard that too. Wow. What did he do? I heard Wendy got him banned. Wendy. Yeah. Wendy got me banned. She was the biggest influence in the world.

Yeah. I think he left the mic on. Remember, Ryan, we talked about leaving your mic on when the recording started. Yeah yeah it's like when they thought it's like when they thought uh austin powers and he doesn't know that his inner monologue is coming out you know did i say that out loud yeah just like i don't know if i remember i don't know if i if i did tell you the story about when i was shooting i don't know if i told you on the step on the day but so i arrived in la and i was me privately mean, privately. Oh, the LA one. Sorry. I thought you were talking about the other one.

No, I arrived in LA and I was jet lagged as hell. And I don't know if you remember, then I came straight to the studio and it's jet lagged and whatever. And I discovered, they treated us like gods at the studio. We all had our own trailer. You could ask for whatever you want to drink and whatever you want to eat and whatever. And they gave me this fruit, which comes in a can. It was very nice fruit juice. And it tasted so good. So I drank like – probably drank like in three hours 15 cans of this stuff.

It really tasted good. Anyway, I was sitting on the stage while they were filming and my heart was racing i was sitting i thought i was gonna die i don't want to stop the show because you know like it was a high high cost production so i don't want to stop the show but i couldn't even breathe that's how bad it was and then what i realized was i was drinking selfiest thinking it's watermelon juice each can has 200 milligrams of caffeine, which means it's like two and a half Red Bulls in each can. And I drank like 15 of these on the first day

and 15 of these on the second day, thinking that this is just apple juice or watermelon juice or whatever the hell it is. Meanwhile, 200 milligrams of caffeine in each can, I was dying. I don't tell you guys what was going on, but I couldn't even take a breath. So I'm now very, very scared of Celsius.

I want to warn anybody that if you do drink Celsius drink, each can of Celsius is two and a half times the caffeine of Red Bull. Guys, also don't drink seven pots of coffee in one sitting. Don't drink 14 Red Bulls in one sitting. And don't do meth also. Don't do that. And now we know why, Ryan. The best part of that story, though, Ryan, and you've told it before,

and I literally die laughing every single time, is that you doubled down on day two. I didn't know. I got back to South Africa. After day two. Yeah, you found out. Yeah, I found out after day two. I did a check.

I mean, I literally phoned my wife the one night and I said to her, if I feel like this tomorrow, I'm going to go to the hospital because I couldn't sleep. I got back to the hotel, trying to sleep, jet lagged as hell, and my heart was beating through the blankets, which was crazy. I didn't realize that I drank 3,000 milligrams of caffeine each day. That happened to me in college. I drank like 300, 3000 milligrams of caffeine each. That's for this. This show,

Scott, this show, me and Ryan were at our worst state. So I'm dealing with all the drama that I had to deal with. Ryan is dealing with caffeine overdose. And then Scaramucci was the most chill person you could meet. Just relax, walking around,

making jokes. Says like two, three things in the entire show. But then everyone listens to him when he talks and goes back to the hotel, does gym, goes to sleep. And like, I'm freaking out dealing with all the drama. Rand is like a little crazy rabbit. But the show, I think, turned out well. I mean, that was like consensus.

We actually did a poll that that was the greatest week in Crypto Town Hall ever. I'm not going to say it was because I'm supposed to see it. I was not going to say it was because i hosted it straight by myself for five days but that's just what i heard it's not me i look since you're so good since you're so good scott since you're so good uh over to you yeah tell us about the please go ahead and start with the fish in the haircut can anyone give us the Please, please, tell us a strategy. Mario, mute yourself. Let him handle it. Please, go ahead.

And start with the fish in the haircut. Can anyone give us the actual update on how many cans of mackerel were traded for that horrible haircut that SPF had in trial? Because apparently he's equally as poor at trading in jail as he was trading at Alameda. Because the story, which has become mainstream news, is that in jail he's trading cans of fish for haircuts. The haircut was terrible. That's the story, guys. Show's over. Thank you, Ran, for letting me host.

Are kids just as strong? The audience just dropped by 500 people just FYI, Scott. I know. I told you. I'm not the same guy i was when you guys were on killer i mean let's just we can talk about something a little bit more serious not on the topic of crypto mario i know you're quite close to it but today isn't the the actual hostage

release happening right now in in the middle east yeah it's history happening as we speak um hopefully it ends up being a long-term truce but it's a step in the right direction doesn't doesn't look like it's going to continue post and whatever three day four day ceasefire but it is a positive step from a humanitarian perspective and and i hope what's the deal like what what's what how many soldiers how many um prisoners are being returned how many hostages being returned yeah i don't i don't know the details i think it's a three to one ratio i think uh but i could tell you one funny story there was a and and i kind of made fun of it yesterday um israel is being criticized for real for for uh for releasing too many hostages

and they're saying that israel released too many hostages does that mean they don't value palestinian lives the same way they value israeli lives it's the most ridiculous narrative that was there yesterday um and then obviously israel responded like hey we'd love to release less hostages but we didn't have any choice but i think it was a three to one ratio um and then it's a four-day ceasefire a lot of aid will come in tanks i didn't know that was part of the deal but i saw tanks moving out of gaza which is a really good step but you got the defense minister keeps saying that you know we'll be back the war is not. So we'll see if something changes in the next three, four days. But it doesn't look like even if I don't know.

Mario, your mic just went full RoboCop, buddy. Is it still RoboCop? Yes. Yeah, it didn't sound amazing. I mean, it sounds pretty cool. I'll just say this because that matters for crypto. I just turned off the headphones. That matters for crypto.

The concern when it comes from a macro perspective is whether this becomes a regional war. The risk is obviously extremely low now because there's a ceasefire, but at the same time, yesterday and the day before, saw the biggest escalation we've seen, and I've said this before, but it keeps getting bigger, on the Lebanese front. So

just take it as you wish, but on the Hezbollah front, we've seen the worst clashes since the war started. So hopefully that doesn't continue if the ceasefire does not last. And if the ceasefire lasts, I can finally move on and stop covering the war. Hasn't Israel in the past traded a thousand hostages for one?

Yeah, that's why that whole narrative yesterday was pretty dumb, like releasing too many. I'm like, anything that reaches peace. But at the same time, there's another Israeli newspaper newspaper that put out i think it's israeli or western one put out another article saying this is a bad decision there were two prime ministers i think spain and portugal i think it was and they were saying that hopefully the ceasefire lasts and becomes a long-term peace deal which is you know a good thing to to to uh to call for all right you want to eliminate hamas but try to do it in a different way.

And then that newspaper puts out an article saying they've become Hamas members because they're advocating for peace. So I don't know, man. It's just... Bitcoin just put in a new high while we're talking about this. It just popped up $38,300 or so from what I'm seeing here. I think that's the highest cycle high here. Then maybe pivot to that then. I thought we retraced from the 38k mark so maybe yeah it just popped up about four or five hundred bucks while we were talking can you can you keep talking keep talking whatever you're doing yeah it's got can you do like a quick technical analysis and maybe i'll around you want to invite gareth i'll send him an invite as well it'd be good to get some analysis yeah the new highs

yeah i think it's pretty simple at the moment as i kind of alluded to before this 38 000 to 40 40 000 ish level that ran and maybe you agree or don't but i think this is just going to be the key level it was a really obvious place for a price to somewhat be rejected for consolidation um and you know volume is you don't i don't agree and i'll tell you why I don't agree because I think that the biggest overhang this... Well, there were two overhangs

in this bull market, which was Binance and you could say Tether. And one of them was cleared this week and for some reason, the market didn't respond. So, like... I tweeted the other day

and I said, if I would have told you that 24 hours after the, the, the DOJ action against Binance, the price exactly where it was before the DOJ action against Binance, you would have said to me, you're a crazy idiot. Like take me to your dealer and, and give me whatever you're smoking. I think, I think that the market is starting to realize what's going on. I'm starting to see some like headlines. I'm starting to see some big people saying crypto is finally getting regulated. It's finally becoming a clean industry.

The US is very serious now about cleaning crypto. And so I think that... You want to talk about short-term levels? Yes, maybe 38. I think that we're about to go on such a crazy rampage. I don't disagree, just by the way. I was saying that was an obvious place for this first move all the way up from 31 to have found some resistance. On the point you've made, Ryan, as well, Ryan, just as JP Morgan said the same thing on CoinDesk,

the settlement will significantly reduce the potential systemic risk emanating from a hypothetical collapse of Binance. So they say for the wider market, the deal would see significant reduction of a potential systemic risk emanating from a hypothetical collapse of Binance. So they say for the wider market, the deal would see significant reduction of a potential systemic risk emanating from a hypothetical Binance collapse. It also reinforces an ongoing shift towards regulated crypto entities and instruments, which has been the objective of U.S. authorities post-FTX, which kind of leads to my question. I'll ask you that question, Ryan, and maybe kind of focus on the price more like what you'd expect to see. But excluding the SEC, do you think regulators did the right thing right thing the government the right thing when it comes to crypto i think that

the government had no choice and i think that c had no choice and i think they got into they got into a hell mate and i think that to be honest i think that there are exchanges that are much more guilty than binance was but i don't think that they're big enough to matter and so the sec just hasn't gone after or the doJ hasn't gone after them. The DOJ needed to make a statement, specifically ahead of the ETF, if we're going to get one. The DOJ needed to make a statement, and they did. They said, look, Sam Bankman freed jail.

CZ is Peter guilty. Bias is no longer a systemic risk to the industry. And now we can move on to the next stage, which is the institutionalization. And I was surprised that the market didn't respond very, very positively when we found out what a small slap on the wrist this whole thing was for Binance. It was literally a small slap on the wrist relative to what could have happened. What could have happened is they could have somehow shut Binance down. I mean, if they wanted to, they probably could have done something like that. And so I think that they gave them a small slap on the wrist.

Binance continues to operate. It continues to operate under someone whose background is compliance. I mean, you could say it's part of the world economic order. With monitorship. With monitorship from the United States. It's arguably the safest... Arguably the safest exchange on the planet after all of this.

So that's the thing. So that's what the market's not discounting. How long does it last? How long does it last for the monitorship? I think five years or something. No, that's not right. Three years. I'm not really one to usually take...

But I've actually leveraged long now because for me me this is like why the hell did the market not respond why did the price not go up to 49 I just want to give you some predictions for the end of the year so we're running a poll on banter

bubbles.com we're running a poll where you can win a full bitcoin if you can correctly guess the price of bitcoin so go there you have correctly guess the price of bitcoin so go there you you you have to predict the price of bitcoin if yours is the closest price uh of bitcoin on you know zero zero zero zero on one one uh 2024 you win the bitcoin and then a couple of terms and conditions you can go and you do enter bubbles.com. Anyway, most of the guesses, it also shows your distribution of how people are voting. By now, there's hundreds of thousands of votes because each user gets five chances to enter.

Most of the predictions are around 42,000 to 42,500. Now, I'll tell you why I don't think that that can be the case. Because the end of the year or the beginning of the new year is 10 days away from the latest date that the ETF can happen. So you would imagine that by that point, either the ETF is passed because the SEC want to go on vacation and it's New Year's and whatever else, it's family time, or it's almost going to be passed or it has been declined. Those are the three outcomes here.

If it's passed, I think we get the guy handle. And as I said before, I think we get to 50, 55, and 60. If it doesn't get passed, I think we're going back down to the 20s. And so I think that next month, we're going to get a whole lot of volatility in Bitcoin. Now, I suspect that the volatility is on the way to the upside. It's upside volatility because I think that there's a huge chance that the ETF gets approved. But I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't get approved and the market gets maxed pain.

Because right now, not a single person believes that the ETF is going to get declined. And what I've learned about markets is that markets will always send you back to the point of max pain. So, I mean, I am a little bit worried about it. But I do think that we're in for a crazy, crazy, crazy end of year, either up or down. Hey, Ran, if you want to signal that the market just went bullish, Coinbase is down. Isn't that always our signal when you can't trade on Coinbase that something's happening in the market? Yeah. That gives me such beautiful tinglys,

like the tinglys you get in the... Yes. You know, like when Coinbase goes down, I get butterflies in my stomach from excitement. Yeah, it's party time. Anyway, I'd love to hear some views. I see Gary... Yeah, I want to know what James thinks

of that ETF conjecture, the case that you sort of laid out there, obviously. James, has anything changed at all as far as like your percentage odds, what's happening timeline? Yeah, we haven't changed our odds, but obviously the Binance DOJ thing, I'm pretty sure I've said it on these spaces before. That was like a left tail, like, you can't call it a black swan because it was something that you can see coming but like it was something that i was just kind of like if this is as bad as like some people really think it can be or it's worst case scenario maybe that hinders it but for the most part our stance has been like the sec is backed into a corner based on some of the court decisions and all the moves we were seeing is that the sec was gearing up to approve this so um can we go conspiracy and say

this was all completely coordinated and they wanted this done before maybe but like based on our point of view we always this is we kind of this doesn't really change our odds we're still at 90 odds it would take uh basically gensler um just like going uh going a little bit insane and denying these things as far as we're concerned, which again is not out of the question. And if you did, this wasn't mentioned, but the SEC wasn't part of that finance settlement. They weren't in that presser. It was every other like three, four letter agency up there giving a speech

and Gary Gensler was not included in that. That said, we still do think it's going to happen. Rand makes a very good point i will say this though the sec on our like it's possible the sec could get things done i know people have been saying they're going to try to get it done before christmas um honestly the sec could have everything written up and ready to go and just not drop it until like a day or a couple days before that january 10th deadline it's way more common for the SEC to like drop these things, the disapprovals or approval letters or orders, like a few days before that final

deadline. So yeah, I wouldn't say like, if we get to like January 9th, and we haven't heard anything, that's maybe when I'd be like, okay, what the hell is going on um but even then they we saw multiple orders drop the day they were due um on the 17th uh this year or like last couple weeks last week so it's not that crazy for the sec to wait very close to the deadline to to issue anything but yeah i guess theoretically we could hear some leaks or have some other things but all these issuers are talking to the sec they're really hammering out some of the details they're changing in these documents are very detailed, like nuanced changing of words and changing of phrases and things like that. It's all good signs that we think the SEC is in deep conversations with these issuers. James, have you ever seen a situation in your history of looking at ETFs where the issuers are changing filings and changing words and filings and the

ETF denied? Yeah. So no. But we have seen stuff that just ultimately doesn't list. There's different processes, like the single security stock ETFs that are out there now in the US. They've been in Europe for a while, but there was a lot of back and forth with the issuers before they launched. And ultimately, they didn't launch exactly the way that people expected them, but they did launch. So the answer is, technically speaking, no, but also people don't usually pay attention this closely to changes in prospectus documents. We'll talk about it and like, wow, these guys have filed like 10 amendments to get this thing through. And that's kind of what happened with those single security stocks. And ultimately, a bunch of them didn't launch, they didn't launch

with as much leverage as was expected. But ultimately, they did launch. So that's kind of like what about right now? With the have you ever seen time create? Have you ever seen an ETF with even 50% of the excitement of a Bitcoin ETF? Honestly, I'm not I don't I don't want you to give me the crypto bro answer. Has there ever been an ETF in history where there has been so much rooting for an ETF to actually get approved? No, definitely.

This is a one-of-one situation. And part of it is like the fact that it's been over a decade that these issuers have been trying to do this. I mean, even the Winklevoss started doing it a decade ago, but even if you go to VanEck and Valkyrie wasn't far after Van x some wisdom tree they've been doing this for over five years this is not like this is a very long time to be trying to launch something uh very

very long time so the it's it's the length and obviously the crypto community is pushing forward and really wants it and number go up and all that all. So yeah, no, the short answer is no, definitely not. JW? Yeah, I'm sure everybody's bullish in the short term, totally bullish short term, not only because of the ETF, because one of the signals of the Binance settlement is they didn't shut it down. They just want to make it compliant and all that.

So I think we've got a good year ahead. I'm just continuing to be worried on the near term because I'm a five to 10 year hodler of projects I really believe in. And there's a lot of risk I see on that term. One thing is what's going to happen post ETF with the institutionalization of Bitcoin? Which way does that go?

Does Bitcoin become tame? Does it become total compliant? Every miner is compliant with what every single agency in the US dreams they need to exclude and blacklist. Is that the way this goes? BlackRock alone can't do that, but mining centralization and compliance can do that. But on that point, sorry, just to interrupt you before we move on to the next point, does that really matter when it comes to price? Or is that more from an ideological concern?

Well, it's ideology, and it also goes to what's the long-term value of Bitcoin. If we can't remain uncensorable, decentralized, then you might as well just use PayPal and Apple Pay. That's my fear over the long term. Bitcoin could always be a store of value in a compliant BlackRock kind of cage, but it won't develop as a payment system, and the others won't develop either. But one good thing, if a Bitcoin ETF gets approved, hopefully that's precedent for an Ethereum ETF or a Solana ETF. And that would be great. Yeah, sorry. You're breaking up, JW.

No, you're there. You're there. JW, sorry, Scott, you're breaking up. Go ahead, man. Good, good, sorry. You're not breaking up, JW. No, you're there. You're there. JW, sorry, Scott, you're breaking up. Yeah, go ahead, man. Good, good, good. So the other thing I'm looking at is so much of the future of crypto is really a referendum on the future. It's just you, man. Host, can you please just remove Scott and ban him?

Go ahead to JW. Yeah, just last point. A lot of the future of crypto is going to be a referendum on the future of the American political outcome in the election, just because the US exerts its power around the world so much. And we have so many bad things coming.

It's not only the threat of Gensler, what Gensler will do in the future. It's the threat of the IRS reporting rule, which is really bad. Basically, we talked about it before. Basically, everybody who creates a wallet has to suddenly KYC everybody who uses their wallet, which is crazy. So you can't have four more years of Biden. On that news, by the way, JW, I'm not sure if you're aware.

Let me open it up. But there's a wallet. There is the – I don't know what it's called. The Lightning Wallet, the Bitcoin Lightning Wallet that quit the U.S. market today. Satoshi Lightning Wallet, something. Satoshi, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Wallet of Satoshi, it's called Wallet of Satoshi. Wallet of Satoshi, yeah, so they need to comply with, yeah, so they said, we're leaving, we're hopeful that future developments, blah, blah, blah.

But Wallet of Satoshi needs to comply with local regulations or laws in ways that it can or does not want to. Probably I'd be opting to cannot right now and we're hopeful that future developments will allow to revisit and possibly resume our operations in the u.s joe have you looked into this can you give us a bit more clarity why they've left the market no i i i only know that it's been taken offline i was going to go back to the etf discussion go ahead now go ahead uh move on to the etf well i i just had a question for james uh you know obviously the first the the final deadline for the arc 21 is the 10th and that's the one everyone's going off of i

think ran said something earlier about how you know they can't delay it any further the majority of the final all the other final deadlines are in march i believe so the question i was actually talking about with the with the arc is what what should we should read from the change that we got a few days ago, where ARK updated, I think their S1 to indicate they will no longer provide direct exposure to spot Bitcoin with that ETF that comes on the 10th. I mean, are we to read that they're going to be messing around with derivatives futures in addition to a basket of spot, so it won't be fully direct? And is that sort of a tacit indication that the SEC does not

want a fully spot ETF in terms of what they're going to green light? Yeah, so those conversations, the ETFs that we're talking about here, they will all be fully backed by spot. Now, the part that is up for debate, the SEC seems to not want basically these brokers and banks touching Bitcoin itself, which obviously we know with SAB 121. And one of the ways around that is to do cash creates. But no matter what, at the end of the day, this matters more. This does matter for end investors. There are some tax inefficiencies that could happen if they don't do in-kind. So the way to think about ETF, usually you do in-kind transactions.

Basically, the market maker hands the AP Bitcoin and in return, they get shares of the ETF. So that's the way it's supposed to work. That's not a taxable situation because you're trading shares for an asset. Or in the case of an equity ETF, you're trading equity shares for shares in an ETF. So that's a non-taxable event. There is a possibility, depending on how they structure these, the SEC doesn't, it seems to be trying to push issuers away from that in-kind transaction, but we've seen updates from BlackRock, ARK, and Grayscale that they are willing to fight and push for the ability to do in-kind transactions. So there's, so that's like nitty gritty nuance type, like, yeah, this might affect

some of the way the ETFs are used. The spreads might be a tiny bit wider if they're not allowed to do the full in-kind transactions. But this is all like plumbing backend. The fact that we're even talking about this and the SEC is at this level of detail with these issuers is something that if you told me six months ago that they were debating this and arguing over this, I would have said, wow, that's a very good sign that we could see an ETF. So it's just, this is all more like backend plumbing, like stuff behind the scenes that most people never care about. Yeah. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the in-kind versus cash. In the update that was issued, I think it was on the 20th. I'm reading

from right here. This is from the ARK21 shares. The trust does not provide investors with direct exposure to Bitcoin. An investment of trust is not a direct investment in Bitcoin. That was an amendment that was made. So I'm wondering if you have any comment on that. Yeah, I don't have any comment on that. I didn't notice that amendment, but I have a feeling that that's probably something that the SEC made sure that they wanted people to put in there. It might be there. There's some talk right now. Some of the other thing we've heard is like the SEC doesn't want this Bitcoin being able to take out, be basically be directly delivered to somebody's wallet. So maybe that's it.

But I mean, at the end of the day, those trusts are going to hold the spot Bitcoin. So we are going to have direct exposure. Yeah, on the 11th, they had their filing said the trust does seek to provide direct exposure to Bitcoin. And this was a change we got on the 20th. So just, you know, four or so days ago. So they're updating language to indicate they're not going to provide direct exposure. I would read that just my interpretation. I could be totally wrong on this. They're going to mix the spot exposure with some type of derivative exposure. I would read that just my interpretation, I could be totally wrong on this. They're going to mix the spot exposure with some type of derivative exposure. Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. No, I think that's not going to happen. I mean, if they swap, we already have the derivative type exposures, it could be possible that basically parts of this, if they're forced

to do different types of transactions or creations like it'll be like 89 spot bitcoin exposure um something along those lines but for the most part this is going to be a spot bitcoin etf so like a lot of this stuff a lot of these like um this school you know this a lot of the disclosures are just like cya like they're covering their own asses in case like something in in intel tail type events they don't have 100% exposure, I'm guessing. But I wouldn't read too much into that personally. Gotcha. Yeah, just so you know,

I posted what I was talking about in the nest. Gareth, have we asked you about your thoughts on the market right now from a technical perspective? From a technical perspective, hey, how's it going, guys? So the key things are this, right? Is that right now, Bitcoin still on a technical perspective, hey, how's it going, guys? So the key things are this, right, is that right now, Bitcoin still on a technical basis is just peaking above that 38,000 level. And that's a big level, right? There's this essentially a wedge pattern that we've been

trading between 38,000 and about 36,000. And right now, we're in the process of potentially breaking out on Bitcoin. So again, if it breaks out and it holds, so let's say the key is going to be watching the daily close today. Does it stay above 38,000? If it does, you have some decent upside here. I'm still in the camp, believe it or not, that with the approval of the spot ETF, we could go as high as 48,000 on this chart. That's the next major, you know, 48 to 50 is like an epic level of resistance, but it is possible we get up there. And is it possible that the market responds in a very different way? I know anything's possible,

but your thoughts on that possibility? Yeah, my expectation is the approval is kind of that huge pop that then look for selling to come in on, right? So that probably would mark a short-term top. And remember, historically, the ETF that was for the futures, that marked a top in the market. We've seen a lot of top. And remember, historically, you know, ET of the ETF that was for the futures that marked a top in the market, we've seen a lot of these type of exciting

events cause these huge pops, and then that's the short term top. And then essentially, what you have is people that are getting their money back that bought in at the 50 ish range, and thereabouts, they say, Okay, listen, you know, I hated being down when it was down at 15k. Now I'm going to take it off the table. So you create a lot of sellers that are just kind of waiting around to unload. And I think that that creates what we would call consolidation or distribution, where it just takes some time to work that off until Bitcoin can go higher. So I would actually expect that upon approval, it puts in a short term top and then it has to work it off for a little bit. I lost Mario, but I'm not sure if it's me once again.

Yeah, I lost him too. Is it better now? Yeah, you were dead air there for 15 seconds. I was muted. Again, that stupid headset that I have. So the question is about altcoins. So can anyone, Patrick, Gareth, JW, anyone give us some thoughts on what that means for altcoins?

And then second question, I'll go to James and Jacqueline. I'm not sure if you guys mentioned it, but the likelihood of an ETF getting approved on the 10th. And then what you think happens if it doesn't? What that means for the markets? I'll just give my two cents real quick. So for me, it looks like altcoins have had a majority of their run already. And I think that any sort of approval of an ETF probably draws more money towards Bitcoin. So it's not to say you can't get some pops on some of these altcoins, but a lot of them have run precipitously compared to Bitcoin in terms of percentage wise. And I would actually expect the altcoins to underperform once that ETF gets approval.

Scott, Patrick, JW. Yeah, I'm bullish on DeFi and altcoins associated with DeFi. I mean, look at the level of volume going through ThorSwap right now, which they have a number of Bitcoin pairs. They're catching up to Uniswap. So Uniswap, PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, ThorSwap, as a result of the crackdown on Binance, on Coinbase, on Kraken now this week. We haven't even talked about Kraken yet. These DeFi exchanges, I'm bullish on them looking forward.

Have they reacted positively to the Kraken news or they've been pretty moot? Well, ThorSwap has been exploding just generally. I don't know that it's related to the news, but I think volumes are up over the last month. And how about token price? How's Uniswap? Well, Uniswap is hard to do because it's kind of a useless coin. It doesn't get a share of the fees,

and they're not going to turn that on anytime soon. Patrick, since we're talking about DeFi, your thoughts, Patrick? I'm going to add in Uniswap, despite being useless, is actually up 25% this week, so one of the best performance in the top 100 on the back of the binding. But if you look at DeFi on-chain stats, sort of to what Scott was saying about a reset to pre-Luna levels this week volume,

except for the USDC temporary DPEG week, which is an outlier, this week is pretty much the best week since the Terra collapse in terms of on-chain volume. And if you look at Thor chain volume, there was actually a day where it was over 2% of all BTC ETH swaps. So there's a lot of positive signs that a lot of activity is starting to move towards. So when you say move towards DeFi, then how are the outflows on CeFi? They must have dropped if there's a move towards DeFi.

Well, in this case, it's talking more about volume, because historically, DeFi, despite having a lot of total value locked, has been a very, very small minority of actual trade volume. Does anyone know the outflows on the sectors at all?

No one's looked at it? I know there's been a fair bit of outflow from... I think there was an outflow from Binance, but I could be right. I thought I read it somewhere. There was a reported billion, but then actually when you dug in, it was very minimal.

Yeah, I'm looking at it now. It's about 1.7 billion outflows in the past week from Binance. Past week, okay. Over the past week, yeah. Out of 69 billion verified on-chain assets so it's pretty minimal in percent do you remember what do you remember what they were back in the fdx for last days i could tell you in in a second yeah please do check scott do you remember i want

to try to compare i don't about 11 about about 11 11 billion all right cool that that makes that what happened now yeah you're asking about the outflows i thought you were talking about their total uh the versus the 69 or whatever the number was that they had but yeah no no no just what the app just what the app was over 10 million one last question at the same time i think by the way uh mario tether like redeemed 7 billion in 48 hours at that same time as well. Just since those are the two that are kind of funded the most, they've always sustained whatever outflows they were faced with. How does that compare to previous outflows since FTX? I think Tether has been up only now since the USDC Silicon Valley situation. They've only captured more share and continued to rise.

What happened to PYUSD, PayPal's stablecoin? Is it gaining market share or just sitting pretty stagnant? I've heard literally nothing about it since it was originally launched. I think it's marginal. Yeah, Patrick said it's stagnant. Oh, shit. That's pretty... I wish Rand was here because I know Rand said that this was, at the time, was the biggest news of the year, and I almost agreed. I can't remember what I thought was the biggest news, but that was up there.

But yeah, it's pretty surprising that it's stagnant. I don't know why. Why would it go on? I've receive the subpoena about that? Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I don't know how serious that is, but I'm just trying to think, like, why wouldn't it gain market share

if there's so much FUD around Circle and Tether? Because I think the way people who actually use stablecoins don't give a shit about the fun around tether you know and i so i don't think there's like a huge market of people waiting for what they view as a safer stable coin at the moment and i also don't think paypal has done much more than uh you know the initial uh start of getting this thing launched so i just don't think it's even been in the market long enough or is established anywhere enough that people would pay attention. To me, that's the only thing left, in my opinion,

that could hold off a bull market starting from now. But Joe, do you have any concerns? I think the ETF rejection would. I think the ETF rejection is bigger than anything. James, what's your likelihood of an approval sitting at 70 80 on the 10th uh we're we're we're still at 90 by june by january 10th so we've been there since uh october um early i hasn't did it why didn't it why didn't it increase with binance though uh we haven't moved it because because binance was a tail risk event in our mind and i didn't think it needed to have i know a lot of people said nothing's going to happen people have been saying nothing's going to happen until tether and binance are cleared

off the board on the etf front it's not related it's not related there's no effect yeah in my opinion no but the only relation i could see not direct legal relation but the only relation i could see is the stance the government stance doJ stance when it comes to crypto. And after Binance, the kind of stance. DOJ doesn't control the SEC. That's not right. Okay. So your thoughts? It was like, I viewed it as like a super tail risk event.

So if there was definitely found fraud and manipulation, hard, like definitive, like evidence that Binance was manipulating the market then yeah we could have seen an etf denied potentially i didn't think that was going to happen personally so it's like very tail risk it was kind of baked into our 10 but our 10 that 10 denial chance was more like the fact that the s the sec gary genza elizabeth warren could do what we'll do whatever they possibly can to possibly find a way to deny this even if it's not legally credible or by heavily or what have you mario mario you got you have to understand the the basis for the denial the basis for the denial of the spot etf the conversion really from gbtc to a spot etf was never about preventing fraud manipulation the sec's own lawyers argued that they basically said listen there's fraud and manipulation. The SEC's own lawyers argued that. They basically said, listen, there's fraud and manipulation in every market. Very traditional,

developed markets, there is fraud and manipulation here. What the SEC is primarily concerned about is the ability to detect and monitor fraud and manipulation. They want to have surveillance sharing agreements in place so that they can actually determine whether there is fraud, because they can come in after the fact and they can it okay so if you take that from the argument they raised in the grayscale case and in the grayscale case they had this you know flawed argument where well because their surveillance sharing agreements with the cme that means the futures market can have an etf but the spot market can't and the appellate court said that's arbitrary and capricious if you're a 99% correlation between spot and futures. They're linked symbiotically. So because of that, the SEC, once they lose on that argument, I don't see how they

can get around an eventual approval unless they're going to go back and revisit the futures application, which was possible, but seemed to be very unlikely. So regardless of whether there was discovered that there's actual manipulation or fraud by Binance, it's really irrelevant. What they're basically saying is, look, if you think there's enough for the futures market, it's logically inconsistent for there not to be enough surveillance sharing for the spot. The next question, probably the most important question I have for you, Joe, Jacqueline and James, and anyone else who wants to take this one. Before asking you, just quickly for the audience, I forgot to mention it's been a while, and we do have a deal with AscendX. So anyone that wants to list their project,

we've worked months to get that deal done. Make sure to DM me or DM Ryan, Scott doesn't want to, and we could help you get listed there considering the market is improving. And there's a whole package involved, including marketing, coming on the shows, etc. So make sure you DM us for that. And another thing is, I want to go through the comments to see what everyone thinks regarding the two things. The likelihood of an ETF approval, three things. Likelihood of an ETF approval, how the market will respond. And then number three is tether.

And that's the question for you, Joe, James and Jacqueline. Is your thoughts on tether? Could that be the last domino or that ship has sailed and and tether we can call it almost a safe bet i can go first i don't think i don't think tether needs to be um that i i don't like i said i didn't even think binance needed to be taken care of before an etf was approved um so like i i obviously i'm not going to sit up here. I'm not going to be some, one of those people that completely defends Tether. I'm also not going to be attack it too, too much. They obviously did some sketchy things in the past. So, but yeah, I don't think,

I don't think it's required. The Grayscale court case, as Joe said, basically the SEC is kind of backed into a corner here is at the end of the day. We changed our odds because the SEC and new division started talking with these issuers. And that was a step that had never occurred in the prior decade. So obviously, I've said we think it's going to happen by January 10th. We're very publicly vocal about those views over the last few years. As far as what happens, I think our general guess right now is basically that we could see a couple hundred million flow in like in the first week, Bitcoin a little bit more for sure. And we know for a fact, based on plenty of surveys that advisors are worried about the regulatory framework.

We know for a fact that advisors, if they want to invest into crypto, they want to do it via a spot ETF. And there's trillions there. So I think over the long term, these advisors that are looking to allocate 1%, 3%, 5% of a subset of their clients' accounts, they're not going to do it on day one or week one. They're not going to pile in immediately. They're going to take time. They're going to look and see the differences between all these ETFs when they come out, which we can't know yet.

And they're going to take time and allocate over the years or over a year going forward. It's not going to be like some immediate like 20 billion is going to flow into these products. So yeah, I guess that would be my caution about what's going to happen with these ETFs. Like I said, I do think there will be some immediate interest. I think it will take interest and volume and flows away from things like BIDO and some international crypto ETFs,

potentially micro strategy, things like that. But for the most part, it's more about the long-term impact of the SEC, basically accepting Bitcoin ETFs and just the way that they're going to handle crypto as a regulatory framework for Bitcoin specifically going forward. Yeah.

Let's go to Joel. Sorry. Go ahead, Scott. It's fine. I was just going to say, it'll'll take time but Biddo's going to zero right the futures products die you'd be surprised

you'd be surprised so I don't think gold futures went to zero effectively I'd say it'd take a long time but I think all of that eventually flows to the spot ETF also the point about RIAs I think the more cynical view of what you're saying about RIAs and not recommending right now and they're waiting for a product is because they can make money. An RIA doesn't make money by telling someone to go buy Bitcoin on Coinbase.

They make money by being the one who facilitates the purchase of the BlackRock ETF and then they get their percentage of recommending you put your money into it. Correct. Exactly. They can bring it under their umbrella and charge a fee on it, which is, which is, which is, that's part of the reason why we think advisors are going to, even if some advisors don't want to hold this stuff, um, that, that aspect alone, particularly if they have clients who already hold this in their own personal accounts, separate from them outside of their fee umbrella, they're going to be pitching it and be like, look, I can rebalance for you like I already do with your stocks and bonds and whatever on a quarterly basis. I'll do the same thing with your crypto and keep you certain allocations that that's

what the pitch is going to be. And we know for a fact that advisors, they want to use ETF. And there's plenty of other people that will use ETFs. There's plenty of other situations. Tax deferred accounts is going to be easiest way to do it for most people in their IRAs and things like that. There's just a lot of people that will be able to access this in a more efficient manner than is currently available. There are ways around this right now. It's just that this is going to be the most efficient way to do it in my view and our view. Yeah, let's get Jacqueline and Joe's thoughts on this particular point. And one point I want to mention that James mentioned is that Tether did some wrong things in the past, but isn't that the same argument we used to make for Binance? Binance did some wrong things in the past.

They've kind of cleaned shop since. So why would Tether be treated differently if your assumption, which I agree with, if your assumption is true, James, maybe we'll go to Joe to get his thoughts on this particular question and Jacqueline. Sure, I'll go first really briefly. So I think you should look at DOJ enforcement actions against Binance and potential other actions against Tether if they are to come as completely independent and separate from any sort of decision making on the spot ETF. I don't think the SEC cares at all what comes down the pipe from that, you know, from an enforcement standpoint. I think they're looking at this thing based on primarily how do they react after the grayscale ruling, which was a disaster for the SEC. Obviously, you know, exactly the opposite of what they hoped. And I think it forced their

hand and sort of eventually, you know, transitioning. The only question is when, where, how, those sorts of details. But, you know, from a tethered standpoint, you know, you do have to say that there is a high likelihood, I think, at some point you get further action. And it's a very simple reason. The DOJ has basically thrown down the gauntlet and said, listen, if you're aiding and abetting the unlawful transfer of money, if you're aiding and abetting money laundering or, you know, consorting with bad actors, terrorists like Iran and Hamas, which is always the boogeyman they throw out, you can expect a knock at your door and you can expect investigations to continue. So if there's any truth out there to rumors that, you know, you're laundering through Tether, which is interacting with

US case customers through major exchanges like Coinbase. There's no real reason why there shouldn't be an investigation and potential prosecution of those entities at some point down the line. Is it going to happen now, six months from now, two years from now? I don't know. And I'm not going to guess. But I will tell you, I think it's interesting that you had the Cynthia Loomis letter where she was encouraging the DOJ to conclude its investigation of Binance.

And she specifically mentioned Tether as well, which leads me to believe that she's pressing on the same sort of button for Tether, that there is an active investigation out there at some point into IFNX and the parent company of Tether, and that there's going to be some action at some point in the future. Now, DOJ can move very, very slowly, but I think people would be remiss if they think there's not going to be at least some investigation into what's going on there and potentially enforcement action in the future.