The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Dips Again! Bottom Signal or More Pain Ahead? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

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Jack, can you guys hear me? I tried to speak before and absolutely nothing happened. So give me a thumbs up if you can actually hear me. Oh, it's a miracle. Roger, Roger. The never-ending glitch. The good news is I only embarrassed myself when I was talking for a minute and nobody could hear anything. Actually, the good news is Alt only fell 1% while you were gone. Only 1%? It was like five minutes we're killing it amortized over you know an hour it's good uh listen we have yet another day of macro data to digest obviously cbi today coming in a bit hotter than expected um and expecting some volatility and to be honest not not that much, right?

I mean, Bitcoin obviously dropped, but it's still trading over 95,000, what, $500 off the daily open. So really very little volatility relative to what I think many would have expected if we saw this hot of CPI data. I mean, Dave, kind of give us the first take on what you saw today and what you expected and what's happening. Well, I mean, you and I've had this conversation many times. I mean,

the knee-jerk reactions are usually wrong. But today was stupid. I mean, just like genuinely like schizo. If you believe that the CPI print means that the Fed is going to get tough, then sell Bitcoin and gold. Okay, whatever. You can believe that if you want. Means you're delusional, but that's okay. You know, I understand markets can be delusional. But at the same time, when the bond yield spikes, you know, 10 basis points, like immediately, that's basically people saying, ah, they're losing control, the Fed's not going to get tough. And so you get this sort of schizo response.

And when you see that sort of thing, then it's almost always the right move to fade the open, just take the other side. And so I posted a bunch to that. I don't usually do this, but just kind of showing technically what I thought was going on, that an obvious five, 600 point bounce was in the cards. And then, you know, you'd get to a real zone, which is where we are now. And if you look at it, there's, you know, the initial fall, you know, the first candle down, you know,

we're kind of halfway through that and we'll see where it goes. And I think for now it's sort of in a neutral stance technically, and we'll see what goes, you know, but the other thing, and I think it was Andrew who's on the panel, I can't remember, who posted something that I didn't have a chance to verify. But if it's true, it's actually really interesting, which is the entirety, in fact, more than the entirety of the the, the excess inflation was from eggs. Now, I

don't see how that could be in the core, you know, because food is generally excluded. But you you know, if the culling of the chickens, because of suspected avian flu, is the major part of inflation, that's literally the definition of transitory. I think shelter was also very sticky and a bit higher, but that's obviously always lagging. So kind of hard to, yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, you and I have had this conversation a billion times, well, a billion hyperbole, but you know, at least a hundred times, and that's actually not hyperbole, that the Fed is stuck. There's this huge fiscal deficit. And, you know, even assuming Elon is allowed to do his job and that the voters will will be taken into account there's still a structural budget deficit that the only way we can get past it is to grow our way out of it and so there's very little chance like zero chance that there's not going to be significant monetary

printing even if it's only just to pay for the fiscal deficit so think about what all the stuff as you want you know the question, and it is the question for everybody who's listening, is will the inflation go into assets? Or will it go into consumer inflation? You know, for years, governments have been very skillful at pushing the inflation into assets. If inflation goes into assets, Bitcoin is arguably the number one beneficiary of that. And so just tread carefully would be all I would say. Bill, you had your hand up. Yeah, good morning.

Sorry for the background noise. I'm at the gym, West Coast time. So look, I've been digging into this a little bit this morning. I haven't had a ton of time yet, but two things. One, there's a huge disconnect with the true inflation number which is you know actually printed a lower number this morning i think it's at 2.07 um housing is generally a trailing indicator and so the way they deal with housing numbers in in core cpi is very suspect in my opinion i've been saying that i think we had a space like maybe a year ago,

March, where I was talking about this. And it's not only a trailing indicator, but the way they try to capture rent versus cost of buying a home versus mortgages, it's just not useful in my opinion. And that combined with the fact that we've got six million armchair economists now uh all basically having an opinion it's just crazy i mean the whole thing is crazy i think i think what matters is liquidity i think tga is being uh depleted i think reverse repo is close to depleted. I think I think massive liquidity injections are coming. I think Trump gets what Trump wants. Trump wants lower rates. I think, you know, on the back end of duration, you know, this deep end of duration, I think I think rates are going to come down precipitously later. You know, in Q2 and Q3, I think the housing bubble will reinflate for better or worse under Trump.

And, you know, to me, I've made my bets, but, you know, I'm not looking for confirmation bias. But unless something is radically off, this looks exactly like Trump won to me. And I think all this inflation number is just nonsense. The biggest change for me is I'm seeing a slight disconnect between Bitcoin and everything else. Bitcoin is showing strong relative strength versus DXY and other things, which is awesome to see. I mean, we've all talked about that for many years, that at some point it would just do its own thing. I'm seeing the first signs of that now, right? Because Bitcoin should be falling much faster. If everything was in repeat mode, everything

else looks like it's in repeat mode, except for Bitcoin. Gold is doing what gold should do as as you know, risk off, but as risk on, you know, Bitcoin should be probably in the 80s. Right. And and so I'm super bullish that it's not now that, again, alts and Bitcoin are not the same thing to me. So so that the alt part makes sense. But but I think I'm seeing it. I'll shut up now. But I'm seeing a disconnect on Bitcoin, which I'm, which I think is awesome. So I'm happy to answer any questions on that. But yeah. Yeah, go ahead. No, I'm just gonna say that's the only real disconnect I see think... Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, that's the only real disconnect I see in the markets,

but that's a good disconnect. Yeah, I just think it's kind of interesting if you zoom out, even go back six months or 12 months and say, hey, in mid-February of 2025, Bitcoin's going to be trading sideways at 95,000. I think literally everybody here would have been exceptionally excited. Yeah, we haven't had the traditional 40% dump on Bitcoin, which we've had for, you know,

four or five cycles now. So that's, I mean, look, that's data in and of itself, right? Of course, it could happen next week. But I, you know, look, to me an 85k Bitcoin, if that's where we bottom as as we merge into all season, I mean, that's, that's still a huge break with the past. And that may not, that may not even happen, right? We just we don't, we obviously don't know yet. But But anyway, repeating myself, it's, it's uh it's very interesting yeah i i don't think like you know in in 2025 uh considering that you know the amount of time so far that trump has been in the office and there are a lot of financial

reaffirmations that you know people are still seeking for um i do believe it's going to take time in 2025 as someone mentioned earlier before me that we do see that bitcoin at that 95 to 100k sideways moment but yeah i i mean there is like you know it's obviously like you know there has been an excessive spending uh like you know congressional spending over the years uh rather like you know i'll say decades so when we come to the alt markets or the altcoin season um the problem in the market right now is not the bitcoin bitcoin is doing what bitcoin is doing uh actually it's like you know outperforming the expectations and thanks to all the etfs and everything, but there literally is no liquidity into the alt markets. VCs have been running up completely dry.

We haven't seen much of the inflows from major investment firms into any alt projects because throughout those last two years, we saw excessive number of infra projects trying to, you can say, layer upon each other but it it really hasn't kind of like you know been effective uh there if you look at like you know one of the major exchange inflows for the newer projects compared to what it was pre-built like you know in the last cycle uh it is not even like you know one-fifth of it into the art market comparatively

like all the liquidity sits in bitcoin or it's um like you know now considering that majority of the liquidity went to trump meme coin and other projects so yeah andrew what are your thoughts i mean it seems that nobody here is particularly concerned about rising inflation but go ahead andrew well you Well, you know, it's rising inflation in the aggregate and it's, you know, in context. It's over the past two years, this is incremental and tiny compared to where we were. It's just a question of where do we go? Where do we go over time is going to be a question of a whole lot of macro issues um economic growth rates uh and 15 other things um yeah there should be concern um probably long term in relation to that but as it relates to to bitcoin price um you know, Bill did a nice job talking about it. There's just going to continue

to be, whenever there's a dip or a drop that's associated with, whether it's macro markets or a piece of data, the participants now associated with Bitcoin versus a year ago, two years ago, whatever it happens to be, they're just in a different place and the bid is much, much, much stronger. And so you saw that immediately with this dip from 96 to 94. You know, we're back almost to 96. If you think about it, Wall Street is in the process of falling in love with Bitcoin. And there's one meaningful reason why. That reason why is volatility. Wall Street rarely comes across new assets that they can price as a premium because it's new and because it's volatile. And Bitcoin currently is and will continue to be that asset for a while. So as they create products, derivatives,

exotics, lending products around Bitcoin, they're going to continue to put a bid underneath Bitcoin's price because they want more and more and more and more and more participants. I don't know if anybody's noticed, but Goldman Sachs has absolutely been pounding the table to their institutional clients to do everything and anything with Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, swaps, arbitrage, you know, all sorts of stuff to just get involved in the space. And they keep sending notes for people to get involved. And the reason that they're doing that is not some sort of, you know, esoteric belief in crypto now and that it's, you know, a life changing, world changing addition to finance.

It's because they can make a ton of money off of it because it's volatile and it's a life-changing, world-changing addition to finance, it's because they can make a ton of money off of it because it's volatile and it's going to be priced at a premium. And so take the reality of the levers associated with Wall Street and as a retail individual, make money off of it, hold the asset itself. So when there are adjustments and downturns like this, it's an opportunity. Yeah, philosophically, we can talk about the fact that any downturn in Bitcoin for its entirety has been an opportunity. But short term right now, because there's such a high floor, high ceiling opportunity here with Bitcoin, take advantage. So when you see a blip associated with inflation, when you see a blip associated with tariffs, when you see a blip associated with

Elon Musk saying something weird about his involvement in government, it's going to continue to be an opportunity. You mentioned Goldman pounding the sort of pounding it to their clients and trying to get them all exposed. Well, they also have their own exposure, which, you know, they just filed their 13F a bit early. I think the rest, we'll see more of those probably on Friday, but they own 288 million in Fidelity's ETF and 1.3 billion in iBit, BlackRock's ETF, and that's Goldman themselves. And that's as of December 31st. So understand that that's a function of them wanting to do business with institutional

clients. So they're carrying their own inventory to be able to execute swaps and arbitrage plays, right? So, you know, Goldman isn't, you know, sitting around as a company and saying we want to own spot bitcoins because, you know, spot Bitcoin ETF because it goes up by 30 percent at any given time. They're using that as inventory to use with their institutional clients to execute these exotic strategies that they're sending out in notes that, hey, we're open for business to do this, this, this, and this if you want to do it. Because again, there's significant price premiums associated with a new volatile asset. And the length of time that they're going to be able to do that, their betting is an extended period of time, right? Again, they can point to their clients and say, it's not only us that are pounding the table here on this product and this asset, but oh, by the way, one of our guys that we're partners with, Larry thinks it's going five to seven X

from where it is now. Are you interested in doing any of this? And so that's the conversation that's being had at the institutional level is we'll figure out a way to get you not only access, but exposure to the asset. It's going to cost you though. It's going to, you know, it's probably going to be a little bit pricey. But that's, that's the reason they're doing it is because it's hard to find assets on wall street where you can, you can charge a premium to your clients. Sorry, Tom and JW, I know you guys both had your hand up before I missed it. So go ahead, Tom, and then JW. Oh, no worries.

How's it going, everybody? So just a few points. The housing number in CPI, which drove a lot of this print, is lagged by 12 to 18 months, which is why it makes it a terrible indicator. And it's about a third of headline and then 40% of core CPI. So that's a huge determinant of these headline figures. You also had a bit of front running for the tariffs, which drove a lot of the goods services. So all in all, I'm honestly not too concerned about the inflation picture, which means good things for yields, good things for the dollar in the future, which drive risk assets. So my perspective is great market action is a little down today,

but more broadly, I'm not concerned about that. What I am concerned about is the continued lack of liquidity throughout crypto and the fracturing of liquidity, particularly in the altcoin space. And I don't see that changing for the next, call it four to five months. So what really will be driving markets in the near term outside of maybe the majors, which I think are going to do really well, the majors being like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, maybe even something like Hyperliquid, which has really established itself, particularly on the downside, is market liquidity, which we've talked about many times. So those acronyms like TGA and reverse repo facility and all those things are going to be really important as we hit the debt ceiling.

And then continued discussion on tariffs and other things that are going to directly impact bond yields and broader market liquidity. I really don't see any thing will have a near-term impact on the altcoins. And I just posted a tweet about this about an hour ago. But the things that I do see potentially could be positive for altcoins are not going to happen until at minimum this summer. Things like the SBR and the stockpile being potentially approved, further ETF approvals, new target allocations from states and others, etc. So really, I mean, it's just, I don't know if it's gonna be a fun few months for altcoins, no matter what happens in traditional markets, but I do like the majors. JW. I'm always the contrarian in this space to say that I don't

know how to trade crypto short term. I haven't found any data that's really useful, really reliable predictor about what happens to crypto short term. I think that what we're all doing right now is we're, if it were possible, we're going back in time and we're trading on applications in the burgeoning internet in the 1980s. So the burgeoning internet where it's just a hobby of a few thousand people at universities figuring out new ways to talk to each other. So we're trading on applications built on top of technology that's very, very, very nascent. It does seem to mostly be driven by macroeconomic indicators, I'll agree, but I don't know how to use it for short-term trading strategies because it's just so noisy in response to information. I worry that what we do in the short term is not all that different from people standing around a roulette wheel and saying there seems to be a lot of odd numbers out there.

Let's bet even, which from a statistical point of view is just nonsense. I think the only thing I know how to do is look at Electric Capital's annual report on number of devs that are pulling github code for a particular blockchain and that should mean ethereum should be booming well that doesn't mean ethereum should be booming that just means i'm willing to buy ethereum bags put my c phrase on metal put it in a hole and come back in five years and be surprised that's all it means um i don't know how to play any of that stuff short term but the only thing i know how to do long term is look for bets where, particularly to me in Deepin, where what they're building is consistent with cypherpunk philosophy. What they're building is something that helps to decentralize something. And there are a lot of devs pulling the code from GitHub and working on it.

I buy those bags, I etch it by my C phrase phrase and steel and I forget about it for at least five years. That's all I know how to do. It's pretty simple, but that's all I can do. Yeah. Dave. And then Bill. Sorry. I'm in a gym too. Dave and Bill are working out together guys secretly. Yeah. I'm working out in my Miami gym and looking out over the beach. It's a, it's definitely a site. Um, the point I wanted to make was to piggyback on what

Andrew was saying before. Two things. First, I wanted to explain because a lot of people, a lot of the listeners in the audience don't know what he means by exotics. And to be blunt, it's not necessarily just because they can make money. Of course, it's because they can make money. It's not that they're necessarily expensive, but the kinds of products we're talking about are things like principal protected notes. So it's a really simple idea. So you get five, three by zero coupon bond, and you take the you know, whatever the percentage that's left over in five years, and you buy call options on Bitcoin.

Right? So you end up getting upside of Bitcoin with downside protection, that is extremely popular and easy to sell to institutions who have seen all these massive runs, but are afraid of volatility. Wall Street will always make more money selling these sorts of products than anything else, because you can take a big spread out of it. Dave, a couple weeks ago, I can't remember the issuer. That was actually someone I hadn't heard of. It begins with a C, but there were, I think, three ETFs launched that had effectively exactly that. One with 100% downside protection, 90% and 80%. Obviously, your upside is capped, but basically zero downside ETFs on Bitcoin, which I've got no traction that I've seen or anybody really talking about them, but they exist and they're on the market. Yeah, but it's not retail that wants these. It's funds. It's funds who need to be able to explain to their board that they've made a bet and that they're not taking risk.

And so, you know, it's actually really interesting. There are some banking, you know, there's some distribution networks for those sorts of products to retail that are kind of within the private banks all throughout Europe. And they're generally the biggest ones. I remember being on the desk of Salomon Brothers, and I can tell stories about this, but it's a big deal. So if you want to know what Wall Street cares about, these are the products that make the most money on. But there's another thing that people really need to keep in mind. And you got to be patient. I mean, it's not etching and steel for five years. But in two quarters, you're going to have every single brokerage firm able to offer crypto trading services right now none of them can, you know, Robin Hood had to set up a

separate affiliate. So if with, you know, with quintens, and Paul Atkins, who will work together, you will end up with a regulatory regime that all the broker dealers are going to be able to offer this so now in addition to just the structured products you're talking about every financial advisor every broker dealer every ria will be able to offer things that you know in the crypto world and that opens up an enormous pool of capital so that's the real money to watch that's not going to change tomorrow it's not going to change in the next few weeks. But you want to look back six months from now. That's your that's a large part of your

catalyst. And the last catalyst I want to talk about, which was a really funny one, if you think about it, is Max Keiser said something this morning, which kind of tickled my interest. I don't know if he's just speculating or if he's right. But evidently, you know, there are rumors that companies like GameStop might be looking at adding the Bitcoin Treasury and we all understand what GameStop is and who follows it and why yeah that was based on a photo of uh of the CEO of GameStop and Michael Saylor

together last week sure now think about what that means though in terms of the aping in process and it's just it's just a question of is there supply? These are all Bitcoin things that matter. Ultimately, the reason that we haven't seen the 40% dump is because there's buyers at these levels that don't want to chase but are happy to let the market come to them. And it's going to continue to be that way. That's why Bitcoin is out. And I would say yes, there's like the active bid you're talking about of gobbling up any dip. But I also think there's just enough passive buying at any price on a day to day basis that it also prevents those bigger dips. this and say, what the hell are we thinking? You know, you know, the people who you know, if you think people get FOMO, you know, when things are going up, and they didn't participate, what if they actively ignored it or sold, because they took profits, and there's a lot of that in the crypto community. So I mean, you

know, tread carefully, as you say, look at the cycles, and don't be surprised if they align with with the narrative after the fact. 100% Bill, I know you had your hand up before then we'll go down the line yeah just uh i was partially responding to what tom was saying before which i thought was really great comments um look my number one focus at ever right now is extending our sma platform into the ria space and i obviously that makes me biased because I believe that that is a better way for clients of advisory firms to be holding crypto versus securities. But I'll actually say that

it's way worse with altcoins than it is for Bitcoin, right? I mean, securitizing gold, I mean, you can make a, I mean, look, I'm fine that all of it exists i think it's a free market but it should be a free market but i think securitizing what effectively amounts to you know gasoline and fuel for smart contracts makes very little sense to me uh and and you know at least with the sma model you're actually um holding the underlying and you're actually staking and you're providing real value to these networks that represent the future of computing. And I think that we really need a broader understanding within the institutional world of what it means to actually uh enable decentralized computing enable enable smart

contracts and you know how to add value to that ecosystem and make money at the same time i'm all for making money but the right way to make money in my opinion in that world is not to securitize solana sui ethereum whatever i mean i'm fine that they're doing it. I just personally think that if you want to make money in that space in the longterm, buying ETFs beyond Bitcoin makes no sense to me at all. And, you know, obviously, obviously totally biased, but since I'm building a competing platform, but I'm just putting my money where my mouth is. Can I just make, Oh, sorry. I just want to make one,

one really quick one bill because i'm good dude all right dave i think we lost dave in the middle of his place go ahead dave yeah did you hear me yeah i was going to say someone call me right at that time uh is that index etfs not individual things but index et which allow people to passively in their brokerage account buy it, will be a popular product until everything that you're saying is solved from a custodial point of view where someone who's computer literate without a computer literate wife doesn't have to worry about what happens if they die. Right. And things like that. And I know you guys are working on all those things, but I do think index etfs are going to be an enduring product i don't think very popular that's the way americans invest i mean that's what they want well ria solved that problem in general it's not

the securitization of the assets that solves the problem it's the broker and the ria that solves the problem so at the end of the day what is the the product that the RIA or the broker is offering and what is their feature for enabling inheritance? I think that's the, I understand the point you're making, but I think the bigger question is, is are people being smart about figuring out their own estate issues within their family? And yeah, it was not an issue in the early days of crypto

and it's a big, big issue now. Huge issue. Tom, then Lou. G'day, everyone. Dom here. I believe there's a big wave of buying that's going to hit us like a brick. And that's going to be when some of the U states start not only establishing, but start buying Bitcoin. You know, there just won't be enough Bitcoin out there.

In the last 60 days, Texas, Wyoming, Utah have all put together legislation to actually establish Bitcoin reserves. And I think this is going to be a domino effect. It's going to start with the states, then it's going to go at the federal level. And then I think we're going to see countries around the world follow suit. And my money's on Bitcoin all the way. Lou? You know, I just want to mention, I think one of the most positive things I've seen the last week, I don't know how much you talked about

it, was the Ondo Summit in New York last week, February 6th. When I first got into crypto in 17, the best conferences were in New York. Consensus was the best conference, but because of laws, the regulations, everybody left. Masari was kind of the last one know, the regulations, uh, everybody left.

Massari was kind of the last one standing and it was a really pretty sad conference. Um, but Ando held this conference and it was awesome. I don't did, uh, anybody else on the call, go to the conference or watch it. I wasn't there, but I was following along and it seemed exceptional. Yeah. I thought it was the best conference in New York in years. And Ondo really did an amazing job not only getting the trad-fi companies like Fidelity and BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, but they got a lot of leaders from government. And they got a lot of the best leading crypto companies to come there. The CEO of Uniswap was, I thought, the best speaker of the whole day.

And so it's just, you know, it's anecdotal, but it is awesome to see, you know, and it was a packed house. They had more than 200,000 people watching on the screen. I mean, I think it's anecdotal, but I think it also speaks to the narratives of the future for crypto and which may actually come into fruition in the coming months or years. And real-world assets is clearly one of those, right? And that proves it. Exactly.

And Ondo really has emerged. It's up 5x in the last year. It really seems to have emerged as a leader, not the leader of our platform for RWA. Yeah, tokenization is definitely coming. BC, you haven't had a chance to jump in yet. Any thoughts? Yeah, cheers, Scott.

Actually, to be honest, just sitting back and listening to all the really good points raised by everyone, and to be honest, a lot of the things I was thinking have been brought up by some really, really good kind of, some good points and some good counterpoints. I think for me, one of the things, if we look at what everybody's talking about in general here, isn't, you know, it's not, it doesn't seem to be this question of if anymore. It's much more around when. Okay, what are the catalysts that are coming into the market?

Looking at this from a position of, okay, you know, where are we positioning ourselves moving forward here? When is it going to be the right time to look at investing into alts? Are we in this situation where everything has been very heavily narrative driven? AI, for example, we saw the big shock that came into traditional markets with the emergence of China in that space, right? And what that did to Nvidia that then obviously

had the impact on the indexes that were being propped up quite heavily by that. I like Dom's point about supply and demand. I think that often gets kind of overlooked here. You know, when states are looking to build these reserves are really looking to step into this. I think we could really, really see a kind of a big shock in here. But the biggest one of all is the fiscal deficit, right? The money printers are going to have to come on at some point. We have a pro crypto president. I know that's kind of your headline banter, really. But overall, I think we're stepping into into a very kind of unrealized world here. And I agree, I think q2 q3 can see the rates really starting to come down freeing up some of that

capital, we align that with any kind of major injection of liquidity and finance into that space. And this thing can really explode, One last point I'd raise as well, looking at this more of a kind of D-gen hat, which is rare for me. I'm very, not very often am I the kind of the most D-gen person in the space by any means. But looking at things like the fear and greed index, looking at that chart, but also just the general kind of sentiment that's washing over people. A lot of people kind of getting tired of this. Bitcoin's basically sat in a massive range, you know, from the early hundreds down to kind of, you know, 90k region. And people are kind of getting a little bit washed up by this. You see the sentiment drop. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that really then, you know, starts

to excite me. And I'm thinking, look, at what point do I want to start accumulating? You know, I'm happy here. I'm happy lower. But once some of those major catalysts start to hit, I think people are really going to struggle to get involved with this. And I think a lot of people are going to be left on the sidelines. And that's sort of what we were talking about before, this institutional appetite that we have right now for the asset class, especially Bitcoin, and this depression that seemingly retailers do not align. And if the big money is going to be buying it up, we know what retail does and they buy much higher. So it's going to take, I always kind of joke that the best marketing for Bitcoin is higher prices or any asset.

And I think that that's going to prove to be true. Bitcoin at 120 or 110 even is going to be in the headlines and retail is going to get very excited to get it. Go ahead, JW. Yeah, I'm grateful to my registered investment advisor friends on the stage here who are going to help my wife with the scavenger hunt she has ahead when I die. I make the same scavenger hunt joke all the time. Yeah, that's a heck of a thing. Look, guys, I think I'm really excited about what Hester Burse is doing as head of the crypto task force. I imagine probably a lot of that focus is going to be on offering reform, private offering exemptions for crypto, enforcement

reform, all kinds of stuff. Let's make sure what doesn't get lost in the shuffle is important reforms to help RIAs do their job to onboard boomers to crypto. So this is a call to action. Y'all, please email crypto at sec.gov. Send your ideas, send your thoughts. I'm sure they want to hear from you. And I really hope they're hearing from the RIA, Registered Investment Advisor community, about what you need to do your jobs, because I think they want to listen. So make sure y' to them meet with them do zooms with them and stuff like that so one one funny anecdote about the scavenger hunt if I may so everybody thinks that the best Trader in the world is uh Nancy Pelosi and all the inside Traders but it's not it's actually

historically dead people uh whose accounts have been lost because they don't do stupid with their investments and they just sit there compounding year after year after year so um so there is something to be said for the scavenger hunts as much as we're trying to address the problem so yeah i mean makes that mark usko tells that story all the time it's like you know what you know performing accounts yeah i think it was, it was, it was fidelity accounts of dead people. I think it was specific to fidelity or Vanguard. Yeah. It's really an unbelievable stat though. I mean, it proves that just sitting there and a dollar cost averaging and doing

nothing. I told my lawyer, you can't tell my kids where my brokerage accounts are for 15 years after I'm dead. They'll do exceptionally well. They might actually have to get a job too which is helpful i think it's a win-win i guess the the next natural question before we head to buzz in a few minutes is um you know i think we're all in agreement that the macroeconomic data is hard to

read it's lagging and maybe you shouldn't overreact to it. I think we all agree that Bitcoin has established itself as a legitimate asset class. It's when altcoins, that's the question I think everyone wants to know what's going to be the catalyst that finally, you know, maybe diverts the attention of crypto natives out of the meme space, because that's where they obviously are, and gain some sort of retail traction, you know, with all-car all-coin market writ large tom you kind of mentioned some of these catalysts before yeah i knew your hand would throw up so go ahead sorry i got out my desk treadmill i have next to my desk here to be in unison with the rodent so i have to shut it off but i'm jogging i'm playing i'm doing jumping jacks now it's exercise morning i guess for everybody um yeah so i i'm really bearish on

almost all these altcoins until the summer but you know even more unpopular i think the only thing that stops this is actually a clear market structure bill on what is allowed and what is not so hester pierce came out yesterday and says you know not so many words that she doesn't really understand this stuff in terms of where the jurisdiction lies, et cetera. You have David Sacks saying, you know, these things are collectibles along with NFTs. And I think until we have like a very clear rules of the road in the U S or what is legal, what is not legal, you're just going to keep having this continual hot ball of money being thrown

out there. I mean, there's 11 million coins. I was just looking at this yesterday and you know, whatever thousands launched every day, it's just million coins. I was just looking at this yesterday. And, you know, whatever, thousands launched every day. It's just really hard to fight for attention. So alts are just really going to suffer from that until we have clear regulation, which is kind of hilarious because we're in the space for decentralization and less regulation. But regulation might actually save us in this case.

I think there's 11 million now. I think there's 11 million now listed on CoinMarketCap. Right. So that doesn't include the bulk of pump fund tokens that are being launched and don't exist three hours later. Well, there's a for a lot of these listings on CoinMarketCap projects are needing to pay about five grand. So think about all the tokens that just don't have that that budget. There's probably what, 10, 20 x that number of tokens yeah exactly so i mean these are just the ones that somehow made it's quite market cap go ahead lou i'm just saying i think the one person who can really save the market if he floats a coin is david portnoy the jail jail stool has not been going particularly well for him of late i think no i will say if

you follow him he no human being has like publicly gone through the entire crypto roller coaster that everybody has probably quietly suffered uh than that guy i mean exactly he's done it very publicly i mean you know the things you would never say out loud, he screams into the camera over and over again. It's pretty, pretty remarkable. That's why he's got a massive audience. He's symptomatic of what this cycle is, though, right? He's a marketer, pure and simple. He has been for 15 years.

That's how he grew Barstool and how he grew his empire for every single sort of business he does. And that's really what each one of these protocols is right now is a big marketing engine. Right now, partnerships don't matter. TVL doesn't matter. Transaction volumes really don't matter. It's these marketing engines and who can actually get the attention to suck in the capital. So fundamentals matter in the long term, yes. But right now, it's just a big game of marketing.

And he's like the exact, in a very specific example, what this market is. I don't think it's going to stop either. I think he got his first fat finger operation that happened yesterday. I think he lost about 800 soul. And I think he's going to revenge trade his way back. So I'm firmly listening to that narrative every day. But we do have a sponsor today. And we have Dom from Havello, a deep end company, which is going to be exciting. But before we get started, I just have a disclaimer that Mario's company, IBC, does marketing,

incubation, and investing. And sponsors on the show are not directly affiliated with Crypto Town Hall, but IBC specifically, and not myself or Scott or any of the other speakers here. So Dom, while we get the Havello account up here as well, why don't you get started with just a little bit of an elevator pitch about what Havello is? Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. Thanks for that. Havello is, think of Havalo as the Airbnb for your computer, basically allowing you to generate income by basically sharing your computer resources. And we're tapping into a Web3 segment called Deepin,

and I know there was a couple of discussions around deep in earlier on, and that's a sector that is expected to grow to 3.5 trillion by 2028. And for those not aware, deep in stands for decentralized physical infrastructure networks. And what Havello does is basically make it really simple for both Web3 and Web2 users to get involved in the deep end space, to share their resources and earn tokens. And for people who are tuning in, we're still getting the Havello account up in a speaker spot. But if you do want to click on the Havello official profile, we've just changed the title of the space.

So you can click on Havello official there. And as we're doing the AMA, feel free to scroll their Twitter account, check out their website, and just see what they're all about while we're talking here with Dom. But Dom, typically for this show, it's a large finance audience, typically talking about what's going on. I'm sure today they covered a lot of the CPI results and what that means for Bitcoin and whatnot. So the audience is very financially astute and has heard about a lot of different projects. So maybe go into a little bit of how Havello differs from other deep end projects that people may have heard of? Yeah, Havello is a deep end aggregation and orchestration platform. So ultimately, if you look at it from a financial or investment perspective, a bet on Havello is really a bet on the whole deep end sector. And the way it works, maybe just to double-click on that, is users go into our website, havello.com, download a Windows Mac or a Linux application.

And what Havello does, it works out your system configuration, your RAM, CPU, your GPU, and then it will install the most appropriate D-pins to maximize the ROI, whether it's for storage or GPU to train AI models. And then over time, using our AI agent, it will optimize the D-pins that are running on your machine in order to maximize that particular ROI. And so so from our perspective, we're really bringing Web3 deep in to a Web2 audience. My personal view, just to take a step back, my view is that deep in will actually help bring in the next 100 million people, Web2 people into Web3, like I also believe RWA will as well. And, you know, what Havello is doing is really pioneering that whole process. We've got first mover advantage, and we actually just only 24 hours ago

launched the Havello HVLO token on a number of exchanges and just actually launched a couple of hours ago on Radium as well. Oh, congratulations. That's a good segue to asking sort of where you are in your roadmap. Like, obviously, it sounds like you just launched the token, which is very exciting. So congratulations. But in regards to the rest of the roadmap, where are you at right now? So the product, we released a product about three months ago in beta.

Right now, we've got around 20,000 nodes running, and that's starting to grow quite rapidly. And obviously, with the introduction of our token, that's going to help cold start and really help accelerate the growth of Havello. And for those that are not aware, there's a concept in Deepin called a cold start and particularly important when you're order to incentivize those early users of the software or of the hardware, in the case of some deepens, to really accelerate the growth of that particular network. And the way that it relates specifically to Havello is that particularly the early users, they'll be able to download the software, earn multiple deep in tokens, but also be part of the Havello airdrops that will be happening on a very, very regular basis. So certainly encouraging those that are early on in the ecosystem, they will be rewarded not only with the deep in tokens that they're mining,

but also with the Havello token that we've just launched. So for consumers who are tuning in, can they sort of think of Havello as a passive income engine that allows them to be deep end agnostic, use their computing resources and just earn deep end tokens while AI kind of optimizes where the best yields are for them? Absolutely. The way that we like to position it, one of my favorite sayings is people can make money while they sleep. We know that particularly in emerging markets, the whole play to earn phenomenon, particularly over COVID, you know, the tens of millions of people that got involved in that, and they literally had to spend hours and hours a day playing in order to be able to earn an income. And the whole premise around Havello is let your computer sweat. Let your computer be utilized and

your resources, your CPU and your GPU, and basically all the facilities that it has to contribute in growing a global decentralized network and actually getting paid for it. And I think, you know, for me, that's kind of a really important point. And if I once again take a step back, because I think as some of your earlier speakers spoke about, you know, it's not just about the money. It's really about what we're able to create that actually betters society. And that is ultimately, we know that, you know, Bitcoin and crypto allows you to be your own bank, while in my view, deep in, it allows you to build, help build decentralized infrastructure and get rewarded for it. And so Havello is really

the aggregator, a bit like the example I gave, like Airbnb for your computer, specifically for the deep end space. So I have an ongoing joke that I often share that on red days in the market, those are the days where I get sent the most invoices and get asked about people getting paid. Because on a red day, people are always thinking, how can I look under the couch cushions to get some money? How can I look at some more passive income opportunities? So I think this is a great opportunity, just given the state of the market today with CPI, to kind of highlight what a consumer who might be tuning in can do with Havello. Have you guys done any analysis on your average consumer? Say somebody who just has

a MacBook at home. What could they possibly earn by using Havello and plugging into this? So right now, just to set expectations, we're talking about some fairly small dollars, you know, anywhere sort of from $10 to $30 a month. That's the target for, let's call it a low-spec machine. assets or computers that have a NVIDIA graphics card, because as we know, there is significant demand for GPU cycles because it's GPU cycles or GPU hashes that train AI models and is obviously an explosion of everything AI. And specifically in that segment of Web3 associated with Deepin, if you've got a really good NVIDIA graphics card, you could be earning an extra $30 to $300 per month. So, it's really the gamers out there who,

frankly, are the ones that are going to be the major winners in the space. And not to say that $10 to $30 is anything to sneeze at, particularly if you are in an emerging market. That's enough to feed the family for a day or a week or potentially even a month. And just to sort of elaborate on that, we just recently closed our investment round that was led by Animoca Brands. For those that are not aware, Animoca Brands is one of the leading gaming investment companies and metaverse companies in the space. And part of the reason they took a strategic stake in us was not just financially, but they've got a significant gaming audience and specifically

one that would be very strategic with regards to Havello. And just to double-click on the AI aspect, training AI models using decentralised infrastructure is materially cheaper. And when I say materially cheaper, I'm talking 80% to 90% cheaper. And it was only when I went down this rabbit hole that I discovered why. If you're a consumer, you can buy a consumer-grade GPU for about $1,000. If you're an enterprise, that same GPU in terms of output costs about 10 times as much.

It comes in a rack with nice management software, but it's basically 10x. So, hence, because of the unique economics are a fraction of the enterprise version, it just means that consumers around the world can effectively put together their decentralized networks and make them available to AI companies. And we just integrated Nasana, who's a leader in the space specifically when it comes to training ai we're now looking and working with the guys at acash and ethere and gpu.net and io.net and many others and they'll all be integrated into the havello platform wonderful and when you were talking about the 10 to 30 a month like just for like sort of a basic setup in terms of what somebody could earn. You went exactly the same direction that I would have of how people in North America or developed regions may sort of sneeze at that amount per month, but it's very meaningful for emerging markets. And you made the same parallel that I would have to play to earn earlier. Play

to earn was very much so dominated in emerging markets as well and people made a livelihood off of that in the last cycle so i've looked at studies before just how much technology a lot of these emerging markets own in terms of hardware so it could be a really really great opportunity what you're doing for these emerging markets to access it um and like electricity is also cheap in a lot of these emerging markets. So they've got computing power and electricity is cheap. And obviously the internet is omnipresent. And so that makes a lot of sense to emerging markets.

But in, let's call it more developed markets where there are gamers. There are tens of millions of gamers around the world. And so tapping into that particular network who have got those NVIDIA GPUs also makes a lot of sense for Havello. Certainly. I want to double-click into the token as well. That's very exciting that it just launched the other day. And the token is mostly used as an additional yield generation

for people who are using the product. Is that correct? That's correct. So we're using the token in a couple of different ways. One is as you use Havalo and you earn multiple deep end tokens, the ones that you're mining or that are sharing your computer resources, you're in addition also earning the Havalo token, which you can then stake and earn a high percentage of the reward. So we've created this network effect within our platform. And so the way to utilize Havalo is, that's one aspect. I'm going

to call that the loyalty side of Havalo. And the other side that I think will become increasingly more important, and maybe just to sort of take a step back, to be able to use a lot of these dpins you need to be able to um own and buy the native dpin tokens you know whether it's a cash or io.net you need to actually buy those tokens and stake them to be able to use that particular dpin as well as the gas uh based upon the layer one where whether it's solana or um or arbitrum or other so, part of the other use, the utility around the Havalo token is that you will be able to stake at once and then get access to all of these D-pins that require their own native staking without having to go and deal with private keys and gas and all of the technical challenges associated with that. And then as our AI agent kicks in and basically starts to change the D-pins on your computer

to maximise the ROI, you don't have to worry about all of that staking and unstaking, all the technical jargon that I think we as within the Web3 audience sometimes get too focused on, because my view is in order to for web 3 and and deep into b mass market it needs to look and feel like using spotify so an average user can basically point and click and experience the the technology and earn passive income you know i remember back in in 2017 i think it was k Kyle Samani, who's a big VC in the space, large Twitter account. I'm sure many of the audience has heard of him. I remember he was really pushing, I think, is it Helium or Helios?

He was pushing it very hard. And I remember fading it back then when he was pushing it, how you could put this hardware device in your house and earn tokens. And I faded it just for the same reason where it was like, oh, I have $10 a month. Maybe it's not worth my time. But every time I look back at these opportunities that I've seen in crypto, a lot of them have performed really well that just take the time to set it up and earn passive income. So I definitely want to check it out. So go ahead, Dom.

Yeah, yeah. And I think ultimately, you know, what we're all doing as part of the community is that we're building decentralized networks, really going back to the ethos of the internet when it was first created, everything was decentralized in Web 1. And it's only through Web 2 that things became much more centralized. And I think with, obviously, blockchain technology and specifically Deepin, we're going back to the ethos of things ultimately will become much more decentralized. And just to kind of re-look at Havello and what we're doing in the space, because we're taking an aggregation model, a bet on Havello is basically a bet on the whole deep end space because we're ultimately not trying to pick who the winners are in terms of the deep ends. We're going to let the data and AI determine what are the best D-pins to run on your particular machine in order to maximize the ROI. And as I mentioned earlier, we just launched on both Gate and MEXC, which are sort of more Asian, Australasian-based exchanges.

And earlier today, we launched on Radium on Solana. Yeah, I like it because you don't necessarily have to pick a D-pin horse, so to speak, and it can be D-pin agnostic for how consumers are really helping to not only earn from the space, but grow it as well, as you eloquently said earlier. So for people who are tuning in, Dom, you mentioned a couple of places, but Radium was one. I think there's a few exchanges. Where else can people take a look at potentially purchasing the token and doing some more research for themselves? Absolutely. I think that the first step is, and I should have just touched on

Havello's business model. Our app is free. So there's no cost for the user. All they need to do is go to the havello.com website. We've got a Windows, Mac, and a Linux version, so they just literally click a button. You log in with an email or with Gmail to authenticate, and you're basically up and running, earning deep ins in literally, you know, two minutes. And then at that point, there are many other things that you can do with the software.

And to basically learn more other than going and using the software, you can follow us on X, on our official Twitter account or X account. And we've also got a very large Discord community as well. I'm going to call it for the hardcore Havello users. And so that's basically the best way for people out there to get involved. And we're currently listed on a gate and MEXC. And I know that those exchanges may not be available to North American users, but obviously Radium, Radium.io, it's basically a decentralized Solana

exchange. We're basically just launched on there. But what I'd suggest for everyone, always go through the official pages because that way you've always got the right CA, the right contract address, just to make sure that you're clicking on the right thing. Yeah, I want to make another specific call out to just following the official link. So the Havello account is now up here in a speaker spot. So if people are tuning in, wanting to check out the app or looking at the token further, make sure you are clicking that Havello account. Give it a follow while you're at it.

But they have a link tree in their bio, which can bring you directly to the official website. And that's how I would recommend people, if you are looking to download Havello, check it out, make sure that you are following official links. Because Dom, as we know in crypto, there's a lot of scammers out there. So make sure that people are following official links, especially when it's something that people are downloading onto their device. Absolutely, absolutely. And I should note that we've already announced our first airdrop at the end of this month. So as people are using Havello, they're earning points, as well as the native deepin tokens. And then we're going to convert those points into the Havello token as well just

as a way of once again cold starting and and growing out our our community and like frankly we're just at the start and what excites me i was at a conference um the other month and there was a lady from a research firm whose name escapes me and she basically said we are basically at the stage of where the internet was in 1997. We are still so early in the development of the cycle. And, you know, 1997, you know, Facebook or Meta and Amazon weren't even born yet as organisations. And so, you know, sometimes people say, well, have I missed the boat in terms of the cycle? My personal view is, you know, we are just at the start. And I think ultimately those that are early in terms of the ecosystem will be the ones that will be rewarded longer term.

Well said. Well, Dom, I appreciate you joining in the Havello account as well. So when listeners are tuning in, make sure that you click on Dom and the Havello account, give them a follow. And I appreciate everybody tuning in. A little bit of a bearish morning with CPI, but I did put out a tweet earlier for my personal account,

just noting that I don't remember a time when CPI being hot was bearish for crypto. So CPI hot, maybe inflation is going to go a little bit higher, but we're encouraged people to recognize that we are in this industry as a hedge, so to speak, against traditional financial markets. So I'm hoping that this is bullish long term. But Dom, I want to appreciate you for joining. So thank you again. And congratulations on the token launch yesterday. Yeah, thank you. And if I can just maybe make one prediction,

having been involved in the space, my personal view is that 2025 is a bull market, a bull year. I think we're going to see the top towards the end of this year if 2021, 17 and 13 has anything to go by because I think history does to a degree repeat itself. I think the wild card is the new administration. They are obviously pro-crypto. But I think the biggest change that I've seen over the last, you know, 10 plus years is it really started off with the geeks and the nerds and then obviously, you know, growing out that community. And now, finally, you know, who would have thought, you know, 10 years ago, that major

institutions like BlackRock would actually be advocating for Bitcoin, you know, and that I think that should really be the bellwether for all of us in the industry. It's like the big guys have finally woken up. Yep. It's a good reminder for people who are on crypto Twitter to kind of that often miss the forest for the trees. So looking back 10 years ago, it's incredible to see where the industry has come. And Dom, I commend you for building something that can really help the industry and help users as well. So thank you again for joining and everybody have a wonderful day. Thank you.