The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Down After Highest Monthly Close! What’s Next? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK.  👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Good morning, everyone. Just adding all the panelists, getting everything ready. I hope everybody had a great weekend. Easter for those who celebrate. Obviously, coming into Monday morning, always a lot to look at in the market. As it says here in the title, as we get everyone up, Bitcoin had its highest monthly candle close ever yesterday. Not an April Fool's joke. It was just over 71,000 for a lot of, I think, analysts being over 69,000, the previous all-time high on a monthly close, now having monthly, weekly, daily, everything below closes above that level. Significant because for technical traders, you look for blue sky breakouts above all-time highs. And that's what we have here with Bitcoin.

Little dip today, but doesn't seem anything of major consequence for the moment. Mario, you here today or is it just your face? And I'm here, but I have no idea what the market is. No, no. Can you hear me? I'm just kidding. You can't hear me. Oh, okay. April Fool's day. Yeah. I got, I got, I got screwed. I got one of my key team members literally messaged me like, hey, bro, your company is too disorganized.

We lost you there. See? April Fool's on us. Mario is not actually here. That's what I woke up to today. Guys, can you hear me? I can now. You were gone for like five seconds. Yeah, I can hear you now. I feel like I'm being trolled now for April fools. We could hear you. Oh, okay. No, no, no. Okay. It's an issue. It's no, no, it's an issue. It's an issue. I know what it is like this fucked up. I, whenever I leave the app, I can't speak anymore.

Cause I'm using the same phone to actually go to WhatsApp. So I don't know why whenever I leave the app, it doesn't work. Anyway, one of my key team members said that they left, they're leaving the company to disorganize, find someone else to do my job today. Like, no, no, there's nothing. Someone is close to me. So, um, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be It doesn't work. Anyway, one of my key team members said that, they left, they're leaving the company is too disorganized. Find someone else to do my job today. Like, no, no, there's nothing.

Someone is close to me. So, um, uh, I believe them because, uh, uh, for various reasons and that kind of ruined my, my whole mood. So what I went ahead is I went and pranked my whole team. Uh, I went to them and said, Hey guys, there's another hit piece on me. It's been what a year. There's no hit piece, not a hit piece on me. And let's have a group call. And everyone's like, fuck, it's been like eight months of peace. Um them and said, guys, there's another hit piece on me. It's been, what, a year? There's no hit piece. Another hit piece on me. Let's have a group call. And everyone's like, fuck.

It's been like eight months of peace. And I drive at least 30, 40 minutes. And before I told them, hey, guys, you're just messing around. But get your act together and don't take it for granted. I hate to tell you, but I think you need to fire your entire team if it took them 30. I think you need to fire your entire team if they didn't Google it the first second

and realize in less than 30 or 40 minutes that you were lying. Was there any April Fool crypto? Oh, a crypto person is doing an April Fool's? Was there any? Nothing I've seen as yet. Nothing I've seen. My four-year-old bought a cup of coffee in the freezer. That was pretty good. We should have planned this. We should have said, Ryan is out of the show.

We're sick of him. We're banned from the show. Yeah, but it's supposed to be a joke. Oh, let's see what I did there. All right. Let's uh, I wonder if he's coming. Actually. I see, uh, we got like one of some of my favorites, uh, let's, uh, I wonder if he's coming. Actually, I see, uh, we got like, what, uh, some of my favorites, uh, people here on stage. This is going to be great, but I want to talk to Matt, uh, Matt, I saw a news piece today. Okay. So let me give you number one, number one,

you had an amazing article that went somewhat viral last week where you said the trillion dollars was going to come in, Keep calm, hold, zoom out. A trillion dollars coming into the space. I actually did a video on it, which is on the street today. I liked it so much. But then I saw some news today that Bitwise would like to see the Ethereum spot ETF delayed until December. So I think that that was really interesting. Everybody really excited about the potential for an approval in May, but wondering what the thinking would be to actually want that to be delayed a bit. Hey, Scott, good to hear you. Thanks for the shout out on the article. Yeah, just hit the first point. The logic behind the trillion dollars is pretty easy,

which is we've been so excited, you know that $10 or $12 billion has flowed into these ETFs. But if you look at the global asset and wealth management industry, it's more than $100 trillion. And if we think that that group is going to allocate 1% to Bitcoin, and I think that might be a low estimate, I think that number is going up. But you know, I previously said 3% is the new 1%. But even if we take 1%, 1% of $100 trillion is a trillion dollars. So as excited as we are for 12 or 13 or $14 billion flowing into these ETFs, we're, you know, we're 1% down 99% to go. And, you know, that's not going to happen overnight, it's going to build over multiple years. But I just spent three weeks on the road talking to professional investors,

there's been a complete sea change in how they treat this asset. And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect 1% of assets to flow into Bitcoin. And from there, it's just math. So I know it sounds like an outrageous number. It feels outrageous to say it. And it will take, you know, years to get there. But I think that's the for an Ethereum-based ETF. But again, based on this road trip I just did talking to investors for three weeks, you know, in the US and London, in like seven different cities across the US, I came away thinking that traditional finance is just not done digesting Bitcoin. In fact, I think if we launch an Ethereum ETF in May, which, you know, long term would be great for the industry. But if we did, I think the market won't be ready to buy it, they won't be ready to learn about it, they won't be ready to understand it, they won't be ready to allocate to it,

there'll be more confusion than there will be flows. And I think, you know, if the people on the call think about their own journey into crypto, many people came in through Bitcoin and then after a while started looking at alternative assets. But it wasn't after two months. Very few people came into Bitcoin and two months later or three months later were ready for, you know, Ethereum, Solana, etc. They came into Bitcoin. They studied it maybe for a year.

And now they're a diversified crypto investor. I think the same thing is true for Wall Street. So I actually think we'll see more flows if it gets approved in December than if it gets approved in May. I don't get to wave my magic wand and tell the SEC what to do, of course. But if we're looking out for what's, you know, quote unquote, best long term for crypto, I think that would be the optimal scenario. And I also think it's probably the more likely one, uh, given, given what we've seen, but we'll, we'll find out, you know, fingers, fingers crossed. I agree with you. I don't think that the Ethereum spot ETF if approved in May would do much.

I think, you know, the Ethereum futures ETF, even though it launched in a bear market kind of showed us that there was minimal interest already institutionally there. So actually, the more you describe it, the more I agree with you because we need more people even to get... Forget even going from Bitcoin to ETH, we got to get them to Bitcoin first institutionally. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 100. And that process takes time and that's fine. Yeah. I think the Ethereum futures ETF is a great example launched with a thud. You know, we, we got to give traditional finance credit for embracing Bitcoin as they have,

and they really have, but they're still getting their heads around it. They're not ready to talk about, you know, different architecture of the, of the blockchains and why one has one use case. And the other has another use case. You know, the last point I'd add is I think by the time December rolls around, we'll start to see some of the benefits from the Denkun upgrade in terms of new applications. And some of those real world use cases will feel more real. And so I think that'll be better as well. Now, you know, will this happen? I don't know. Um, but this happen? I don't know.

But it's what I'm hoping for. December would also potentially have a different SEC, right? And we see a number of issuers adding staking to their Ethereum spot ETF filings. And to me, that's sort of a capitulation that it won't happen in May, because it makes them materially different than the Bitcoin spot ETFs, you know, which whose path they were somewhat following. I mean, is that meaningful? You know, does December have anything to do with that potential sort of regime change? And even I mean, even listen, even if Biden wins, it could be not Gensler, right? I mean, that's possible. Yeah, we'd probably be approaching regime change in December. You know, it depends on how people read the tea leaves and when they decide to leave.

But yeah, the sort of window for regime change at the SEC, if there is one, is probably something like November to March. Right. And it could, you know, could fall anytime in that period. And I'm not convinced we need, you know, a change at the head of the SEC to get an Ethereum ETF. Yeah, I think the case, you know, that that can be made for an Ethereum ETF is pretty strong from a data based perspective. And, you know, I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful that we'll get

there, we'll find out. But yeah, you know, I do think issuers are looking ahead, usually don't complicate an application a few months before approval. If you're hoping to get it approved, usually slim it down, right, You move toward a simpler direction. That's what we saw on Bitcoin ETFs. People dropped in-kind creations in favor of cash creations. That was going from complex to simple, right? So that's the direction of travel as you typically approach approval to the extent that you're seeing issuers move in the opposite direction. I think it's reasonable to read into the tea leaves what that might mean. So yeah, I think you have it figured out. And,

you know, it's also worth noting, it's December, it's the middle of next year, you know, I think we're going to get there. I think we're in the ETF era of crypto. So it is just a matter of time. But you know, of course, what we do is try to predict times. And that's where I'm at. Tom? Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Just wanted to double click a bit more on what Matt was saying there, just to give you a sort of color on how slow these guys move. We're so used to moving at light speed in crypto and watching the grass grow would be fast for actual allocators here. So in a previous life, I was an institutional investment consultant, and that's what these guys lean on to advise. So that's the foundations, the pensions, the ones who

have really big assets to move. And that process takes quarters. So they're going to have someone write a research paper about crypto, why it makes sense in a portfolio. Then they're going to go to a board meeting and they say, OK, maybe crypto makes sense. Bring us back some portfolios with crypto in it in the next quarter. After the next quarter, they may decide, OK, yeah, crypto makes sense. And then the next quarter, they're going to bring in some managers. So this process takes three, four quarters at a minimum up and above just looking at crypto as a potential allocation. So we still are very, very early days for all those flows Matt is mentioning, but they're certainly coming.

Yeah, I agree with that. Matt, on the Ethereum spot ETF, what is the December? I just want to know really quickly, why is the December date? Is there a specific date in December that's important? We always, with the Bitcoin spot ETF, obviously looked at, you know, kind of a dead date for the last time that the SEC could reject something. Is there a date like that in December or is it just sort of a ideal time window? It's mostly just sort of an ideal time window. You know, obviously, you know, Bitwise has a specific filing, which I can't speak to. So, there may be some timing in around that. But it's more my gut feel on when the cumulative weight of these things will

add up. You know, it's probably better for me to say something like Q4 rather than December specifically. So no dates right now. I'm sure Eric and James and the Bloomberg guys will be coming out with dates in the future for all the different applications. But, you know, think of it as Q4 and late Q4. And that's probably the most accurate I can be. I think that's in the future for all the different applications. But think of it as Q4 and late Q4. And that's probably the most accurate I can be. I think that's what you just said. He's now 25% chance of approval in May. They were over 50% in the Bitcoin spot ETFs got approved. And he said he would make it lower than that. He could, which I guess he could in theory, but obviously not much excitement around the May dates anymore. It seems like it's

becoming more of a foregone conclusion that it's not going to happen then. But Matt, or anyone, but Matt specifically, I want to ask you about the news that's recently come out about Hong Kong doing actually in-kind ETFs, right? Bloomberg wrote a story about it last week, and it kind of became news in December. But that Hong Kong, which is still a massive market, and if we look at Bitcoin's spot volume, you know, we know that primarily comes from Asia. It's over 80% or something. So how meaningful would a Hong Kong approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF with in-kind rather than cash-free HP? Well, to me, and I'd love to hear other people who are experts on this space, to me, a Hong Kong approval is an important thing. Hong Kong is sort of a release valve for angry capital that builds up in China.

And it's historically played that role, you know, releasing it into US stocks, releasing it into European stocks, and now releasing it into Bitcoin. And I think that's why this ETF is or could be important, because it allows capital trapped in China to gain access to this incredible market we call Bitcoin. To my mind, the in-kind versus cash thing is not actually that important. They both end up buying Bitcoin. Some are, you know, sort of more lucrative than others for the issuers. But I personally didn't read too much into the in-kind versus cash decision there. I mostly just think, you know, the big thing to keep your eye on is this idea of how capital that's built up in China can release into the Bitcoin economy. And a Hong Kong listed ETF is one of those ways.

But I would love to hear what other people think. Sure. Fred, you had your hand up before. I'm not sure if it was on this topic specifically but go ahead oh i was just going to say that on the uh ethereum etf side um you know i think again it's still not happening in may for other reasons you know we still have our case against the sec on eth being a security going we um We'll get a little bit of reading the tea leaves on that if the court grants us oral argument. It's saying in the range for July, and that doesn't mean anything. Fred, not to interrupt, but can you just give some color on the case, just so people probably know? Yeah, the 30-second overview is our law firm filed a suit against the SEC back in November of 22 on,

we wanted a declaratory action saying, hey, Ethereum is not a security. We've got the Hinman speech. We've got the CFTC saying it's a commodity. It's not a security. HODL law uses Ethereum to custody for clients. We use it to transact on the network. And at least in that regard, it's not a security. And the SEC came back and said, we've got to dismiss this case. There's no standing. We don't have to tell anybody whether our opinion of ETH is a security or not. We haven't made up our minds. And then the judge said, yep, there's no standing. So we appealed that to the Ninth Circuit. And if we win, if HODL law wins, we just go back down and have a case about whether Ethereum is a security or not.

And so the Ninth Circuit, we're just waiting to hear if they're going to, the briefing's all filed. We're just going to wait to hear if they want to talk about it more. And it's a great case in the sense that if we can win, it's not just the SEC, but it's every other government organization that the citizen can say, hey, listen, if you're just going to hide the ball, then we're going to force you to tell us. And, you know, the government doesn't like being forced to do anything. So if the bottom line is if the court, if the Ninth Circuit, I think, wants to hear an oral argument and listen to it more deeply, then there's a better shot for us at potentially winning on on the procedure level we're at now and i'll find out um you know we'll find out in the next month if that's probably

going to happen that's great great color thank you uh last week larry fink said that he doesn't think that it matters whether ethereum is deemed a security or not for the prospect of ETF. Seems like he loves poking the hornet's nest there, right? I think that my only caveat with Ethereum becoming an ETF at any given time is, you know, I always say Gary Gensler is not anti-crypto. He's just, you know, pro whatever his, you know, paymasters tell him to do. So, you know, if he gets enough people telling him, all right, we're doing the Ethereum ETF now. I mean, I think he'll switch in a heartbeat. And, you know, there's already two commissioners that are pro in Ethereum ETF.

So, you know, that's all it takes. Gensler had to be the tiebreaker on the Bitcoin spot ETF as well. It's actually kind of rare that you even need to vote on ETFs. So we're kind of in a new strange paradigm here in general. Anybody else have any final thoughts on the ETF before we move on to talk about the price action? Cool. I think we've beat ETFs to death in general on this show and every other show for the moment. So we can move on. How meaningful to those of you, maybe Joe, we can talk about this.

The Bitcoin closed highest monthly close ever above the previous 69,000. I mean, do you think that this is further confirmation that we're just kind of in a raging bull market? Matt, you're the one who said raging bull market in that article last week. Joe, do you think that that's further confirmation? Is that what we would have been looking for sort of on this monthly and quarterly close here? I mean, the sentiment feels like we're in a raging bull market with everything that's happening, you know, around Bitcoin.

I would say, you know, Bitcoin is in the range. It's, you know, up 12% on the month, which is fine, which is great. You know, but in our community, that's not a lot when you've got the volatility that we're used to. You know, we've got Cochino is up 125% on the month, Scott. So, you know, I think that's pronounced cock in you. But yes, go ahead. But yeah, I'm just looking, you know, I've been looking at a lot of the rest of the market and the L1s, you know, continue to run. L2s continue to run.

You know, who knows when we get L3 through 15, that's probably coming out here. But Bitcoin is ranging. And I think it's when are we going to get some news? What's going to happen here coming up? I mean, the halving is more psychological. I don't think that's going to be a huge movement for price. But, you know, I'd say over the last 30 days, like Matt and everyone has been saying, like inflows have been fantastic. And we're up 12%.

So it just feels anticlimactic a little bit of where Bitcoin is going to go. But I think the base feels really good with the amount of people that are coming in and the appetite for Bitcoin. But I'm just looking at the rest of the market. And I think that's why the rest of the market has started to move a lot is everyone's like, oh, Bitcoin's boring again. And I got to go over here to figure out where I'm going to at the rest of the market. And I think that's why the rest of the market has started to move a lot. Everyone's like, oh, Bitcoin's boring again. And I got to go over here to figure out where I'm going to find some alpha. And so that's why we're seeing a lot of movement over there. Has the meme trend flowed at all over the past couple of weeks?

It sort of reached a fever pitch, obviously, on Solana right when Bitcoin was around $74,000. You know that I rely on you for my info on this. But now, obviously, maybe Solana's cooling. I don't know. But I know that there was on you for my info on this but uh now obviously maybe salon is cooling i don't know but i know that there was a rotation to base and now you literally mentioned it in layer three on base called dgen is that correct well yeah dgen is actually on um farcaster on warpcast and so there it's actually just a um it's a group um if you're Warpcast, it's a group that's on there. But that's kind of the whole point of decentralized social media is that you can build projects on top of that and people can utilize the tokens for whatever they want and building out community. So it's great to see the building over there into actual decentralized social media.

Right now, it's just Warpcast and there's not a lot of other app layers that you can use on top of it. But hopefully, there will be in the future. But yeah, I wish it was slowing down a little bit. But I mean, just even looking at it today, like Book of Meme is back up there. Degen is up there. It's going to have a little utility, but it's starting kind of meme-ish. But we had like 3 days of slower meme coin days and then

bam, it just came right back. So I think we're still in it. Isabelle, you keep giving lots of hundreds of thumbs up. I'm just like bullish. I'm bullish on the meme coins. I'm super bullish on the meme coins. I feel like they're

maybe my favorite use case for all blockchain technologies, but that's a personal preference. Well, they're rebranding themselves. What does that say about us? No, that's what's happening. So it's a couple of called themselves community coins. So maybe we'll see a rebranding. Did you guys hear about the hot dog, the Costco hot dog meme coin?

That's my new favorite. I mean, I saw that it existed and then i moved on with my life but um maybe if is there some important intel or is it just hilarious that we have a costco hot dog coin it's just hilarious the meme's doing well i'm seeing some uh cross-chain memetic action between like bitcoin ordin ordinals and Solana NFT people. The hot dogs are, uh, seem to be, uh,

getting a lot of internet attention cross chain. So I'm excited about that. Okay. Mike, you're here in McGlone. I have to ask you when you hear this as a, uh, you know,

uh, multi-decade commodities, trader and strategist and head of commodities at Bloomberg. What does this say about the froth in the crypto market? And what general reactions do you get when we're talking about Costco hot dogs, book of meme and cocky? I got to appreciate the sense of humor. And it's one thing I love about cryptos, crypto people.

There is a good sense of humor, a lot of funny stuff here. I just, you know, I remember writing about Shibu Inu and it was right near the peak and this kind of stuff is is clearly signs of froth and a lot of excess cash in the money which is part of the reason inflation is too high part of the reason the fed can't ease until the stock market goes down until cryptos give up a little bit you see the trend there but the sense of humor is great but i like what you said is um i put a lot of stuff on my di list deliberately ignore and i just because i hear some of it from other places and like in the show but what bottom line matters

here is what matt was saying there's one thing there's one person i love to piggyback on and and steal some stuff he says sometimes it's matt is this space is um it's maturing so fast um and bitcoin i'm so etfs in in ethereum are matter of time and i look at it it's 30 000 view i'll let you guys and my colleagues figure out when that's going to happen and etfs attract a a basically an index of cryptos is a matter of time if you're trying to protect investors it's just you know we tried to talk about this six years ago so i you know where it goes from here but the bottom line for me macro is um we have every you know gold bitcoin and s p 500 i'll close at record highs at the end of q1 and the good news is gold and bitcoin both have had decent corrections in q1 but beta hasn't to me that's the biggest risk for

everything is once we get past past just a little bit of drawdown in beta let's see who's wearing clothes when the tide goes out a little bit and see how things react i'm still afraid that um one thing about bitcoin it still trades about three times the volatility of gold in the sp500 tom yeah we are a very serious industry investing in costco hot dogs right and it's uh it's a bit it's a bit hard to try to justify that to folks outside the industry, but it is fun, right? And every investment that you make in crypto, it's some percentage attention economy and then some percentage fundamentals.

Ideally that would be 50-50, but for the meme coins, it's 100% attention economy and 0% fundamentals for more esoteric things like deep tech, it's 100% attention economy and 0% fundamentals for more esoteric things like deep tech. It's the other way around. So thinking about these things on that spectrum is really important as you invest in crypto because this asset class is enormously liquid and you have to have the attention economy angle or you don't have a good investment. Yeah. So is there a happy medium somewhere between quote-unquote community and getting that attention and something that actually could have meaningful adoption or in some way move the needle moving forward for the industry?

I actually think so. Ideally, it would settle on 50-50. But in the early stages, I almost think 100% attention economy is almost better. Because if you have the attention economy, you can raise the capital, you could start reinvesting in the project, and it hits a virtuous flywheel that you actually keep improving the project based on just the attention you've gained on it. And you've seen this with... So like Shiba Inu right now is launching a ZKL2, which sounds ridiculous, right? But they built this project because of the attention of the coin. And now they're actually building a fully functioning, potentially interesting project based on that. So the attention leads the price action in this space. And it's really important

to have that attention. So you just have to figure out how to generate it without being completely ridiculous. Or I guess you could be completely ridiculous. And as long as you're at the top of the charts, you'll raise the capital. I can't wait for the Costco hot dog perp decks that I'm sure we'll all be trading on soon. Go ahead as well. I was going to say, I am pretty convinced that 100% absolute full-blown ridiculous is actually a feature, not a bug. When it comes to the attention economy, I think that this is very, very... This is clearly... Excuse me. I think ridiculous is what's winning right now. Yeah. I don't think there's any question that ridiculous is what's winning. I think there's question if that's a positive or negative sign that

ridiculous is winning right now, because even Tom, yes, they're, they're building things. So I, and we've, we've talked this to death in the past. The fact that some of these become real quote unquote and start to build things I think is positive, but there's sort of one in one in 10,000 to do it, but there's been no meaningful adoption as of yet of anything that those have built. Correct? Can anyone tell me or give me an example? Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, seriously, is there an example of something that was completely community driven or ridiculous

that's built something meaningful that anyone has actually used? Well, it's also sort of like your definition of what's meaningful and like, what is the purpose of this technology? Like, you know, to some extent, right, you could make the argument that there's really no proven use case for this technology other than just like the transfer of assets. And, you know, art assets, cultural assets, right? I mean, that, I mean, NFTs in general, I think have been like the primary most proven use case of blockchain technology outside of Bitcoin itself, outside of just money. And so I don't know. I'm not totally convinced that that's...

There's something kind of refreshing about just sort of owning that as a use case for blockchain. Scott Float. World's largest casino. Floki started as a pure meme coin just community and so you know like as well saying like that is utility for some people right like what is board a you know you're priced out of nfts you know you want to put 50 bucks in and join a an online community you know you've got you know any of these meme coins but yeah they've i mean they've built schools um you know i don't know how many people on this call here have built schools,

but they've built multiple schools. They do have DeFi utilities, launch, launch pads. They do have, you know, trading like they, I think they tried to build a metaverse. I don't think that worked, but there are utilities that are coming out of it and there's a multi-billion dollar foundation. The foundations of a lot of these projects and the communities and the buying power that they have is bigger than most university endowments. Even some of these L1s that are out there, it's like I think Tezos was holding like 30,000

Bitcoin. These are larger endowments than some tier one universities. These things just are never going to go away. And I think that's what people don't understand is that there's just you know if they manage the money correctly you know they're going to be around forever um we're all going to die and floki is going to be around it's going to be wild can you tell me about the schools that floki has built? They built some schools, I believe in Africa. And they did... I think it was in... I think Guatemala was one of them as well, Ghana as well. And then they also built... I think they built a restaurant with Kimball Musk as well. So, there's other things that are happening that the money is kind of flowing back into what's going on and they have ecosystems.

That was previous cycle. And we're going to talk about meme coins again. It just keeps happening, but those are previous cycle meme coins. I think kind of to Isabel's point before, this cycle barely even rhymes with the last one, right? Because this is literally people just launching a thousand of these things a day, rotating, knowing they're going to be, you know, that most of them will be zero in a month or a week or an hour.

Yeah. They're going to hit a wall. For sure. A lot of them, they're like, there's no utility, there's no point, there's no anything. And then they're going to wake up in 45 days and people are like, what's next. Right. So it's like, I don't know if these people have run businesses before, but it's the same thing when you have a community and a public community that all owns the thing that

you have said and might have $20,000 and if they're going to look for more. Yeah, I was just going to add, I think sometimes we ask too much of the meme coins. I think you can think of them mostly as consumable goods. Like the joy that people get from them is from buying them. And most people don't necessarily expect that there'll be a great long-term investment.

They're just literally supposed to be fun. And if you, if you reframe them as consumable goods and then make sure people aren't aping into them, expecting something they're not, then I think it's, you know, basically just fun to watch. We don't complain about other consumable goods. I just think of them that way. I think that's like a particularly important point for retail, because I think, you know, retail is getting into meme coins, because they kind of understand meme coins for that reason, like it resonates with something cultural, They don't need to try to understand

tech that they don't understand. I think one of the things that a little irks me maybe about some of these other more utility-focused hyper-technical projects is you're dependent on retail to drive up price, but they don't really know what they're buying a lot of the time. And I think that that's much more problematic than just being straightforward. Like, hey what they're buying a lot of the time. And I think that that's much more problematic than just being straightforward. Like, hey, you're buying a monkey. Have fun. I'd almost rather somebody buy a monkey that they're having fun with than somebody making large investments into something that they don't really understand because they think

it's going to be something. But that makes me more uncomfortable in terms of just like ethics. I think. I can understand that, especially in the fact that sometimes even if you buy a token, as you described that you believe in the project and something fundamentally will happen, the project could theoretically succeed without you making any money on the token because the tokenomics don't always align with the building, but go ahead, Fred. Yeah. I was just going to say, Scott, how much of your meme coin take is based on anger that there's already a milk token, M-E-L-K, and you just weren't able to get in on it? Is there?

There is. I just had to look it up. Cat with milk. But they obviously took the first four letters of your name. Oh, my God. The names. with milk but they obviously took the first four letters of your name oh my god they've been named yeah there's a project called cat boy that keeps like posting uh like images of me with ears talking to cc eating pizza and stuff which we had on the on here not that long ago so i'm not surprised that i've been named but i did not know if cat with Milk. So now begs the question, how well is it doing? Well, you know, on the minimum trading volume, it's up 400%.

Crushing it. Cat with Milk the next day. You didn't hear that from me, guys, because I know I have no idea what that is. But the problem, Matt, I like the idea of this being consumable goods. I think that's a good framing. The problem is like if a hundred percent of the participants believe that, then I'm on board with that idea. I just, I always concerns me after previous cycles, how many people end up holding the bag on things that they, for some reason, believe that fundamental value.

Yeah, I deeply agree with that. I deeply agree with that. That is the worry. I just think if the, if the crypto media can frame them as consumable goods, maybe it will help more people see and understand what they are. I do worry about people who think of them as investments. Obviously, that's the concern. But, you know, I think it's what they are. Right. You know what you're buying when you're buying these. And hopefully it's on our shoulders to help people realize that. That's interesting because it means we actually have to frame it somewhat as a big casino in that regard, right? You're just going to the casino, casinos are fine.

Just know that you're at the casino. Correct. Yeah. I think it's, yeah, I think it's incumbent on us. I think we're doing a service if we do it. Tom. Yeah. I think an interesting point that we got to in that discussion is what's going to happen with all these treasury assets that each of these projects raised in the past, especially early cycle projects that are now sitting still with $100, $200 million, $300 million and no active way to deploy it. And if you're an L1 or L2 or even sort of an app that did that, and if your application is really not gaining traction, but you have this huge war chest of money, what do you actually do with it? And I don't think projects really have come to terms with that at all. And the treasury management system is completely in its infancy

in this space. I mean, Even basic portfolio management stuff is not seen for these guys. So isn't treasury management just leave your assets in the hot wallet and hope for the best? Literally, for most of these? Yeah. Fingers crossed. Seriously. But where does all the capital go? And I don't have a good answer to it. But where did all those hundreds of millions go to new projects, to new endeavors? Do they invest it in liquid assets? I mean, it's just, it's completely up in the air right now. Yeah. Do you have any theories? I mean, there's the attempt to build something that nobody's

going to use side, but what else can they do with them? So I think most of these guys are just literally investing in liquid crypto right now. So do they actually redeploy that into their ecosystems? Do they build something new? Very unclear. But the problem is going to get much bigger as crypto continues to move up. And if they're holding their own individual tokens, they probably will continue to go up as sort of a beta plus to the asset class, depending on what asset they are. So you're just going to have this huge amount of almost zombie capital from all of these underlying chains that never found use cases, but just have

enormous amounts of treasury assets they have to deploy. They become hedge funds? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think there's honestly a huge business for just outsourcing this stuff or being someone who can manage these assets for people because they've become like liquid hedge funds right now. I think that that's effectively what they are, but yeah, unclear where they go from there. Or we see cat with milk advertising on the side of the sphere as a useful use of their capital. Right. Okay. I guess I lifted your bike. Go ahead.

Oh man. What up? What's up, Scott? How are you? Hey, buddy. Hey. No, yeah, I was just going to butt in for a second. It wasn't a big point. But no, I mean, I know personally a few companies that are just kind of riding on dead capital. They've had for three plus years and they're just paying their 25 plus employees pretty hefty salaries. And they know they're going to fail. They know it's going to run out. But they're just they're pretending to run a company. And I think that's kind of how it's're going to fail. They know it's going to run out, but they're just, they're pretending to run a company. And I think that's kind of how it's just going to go.

A lot of companies, especially from, from last bull run, that still have like six years of capital left. They're just going to kind of keep paying the same employees, their hefty salaries until it runs out and then say they tried and run it back at some point. Yeah. So I guess there's that, which are sort of failed projects that actually made money because of tokenomics. And then there's things that are being launched kind

of as jokes and end up in this situation, right, Tom, where they have capital and then have to figure it out. Right. That's, that's the... Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I think there's, there's two different angles, right? There's like the complete jokes that raise capital, but then there's like the, I don't know if you call Ripple a complete joke, but something like that. It has an enormous amount of capital, doesn't really have any usage, or even bigger chains. I don't want to... Not Cardano. I'm not going to mention Cardano or I'm going to get all the replies. Never do that. But there are a ton of big L1s, L2s that have launched and just raised a ton of capital that just have

no actual usage on their chain. And then you have, of course, the jokes that you raised as well that also have a ton of capital. So there's a lot of money sloshing around that has no home right now that has coherent endgame for it. Right. But if you're an L1 that's raised a ton of capital, and there's just no engagement, you should be running it like any business and using that treasury to try to attract attention and build things that would make your project functional. I mean, there's a corollary for that in capital markets and VC in general. I mean, that's a company in theory. Yeah. I mean, you have projects like... This is why the conference business is a good one, right? Because that's what they're doing. They're going to sponsor conferences and

booths and all that stuff. I don't know if everyone heard about Venom that launched. I literally hadn't heard of it until it came out. But it was... I think it's like 5 billion FTV. And they're sponsoring million-dollar-plus engagements and conferences all over APAC. So I think you're just going to see marketing, marketing, marketing for a lot of these, these protocols just to get people on their chain. I mean, that sounds, and I'm not going to say it's exactly this. And what pancake sounds effectively just money laundering into the pockets of the people that work there until it's dead.

I mean, I, I stealth advise for a company for, I won't, won't name them at all, but a big company for two months. And I ended up quitting because the marketing team straight up told me that advised for a company for i won't won't name them at all but uh big company for two months and i ended up quitting because uh the marketing team straight up told me that the founders told them that they had about three years of capital left and they had to kind of pretend to run a company for three years and i was like oh that's what i'm a part of so i ended up leaving but um and that was last cycle so i think we're just going to see a ramp up of that this time around so it is what it is yeah joe i saw you speak yeah i mean eos has 164 000 bitcoin like you know they have 11 billion dollars in bitcoin you know they have 160 million dollars

traded today in their markets like these things are going to be around forever you know it's like that is just a massive amount of capital and like they're probably the biggest one um you know i think up until last year they had a little bit more than even micro strategy held um and they're trying to do things i think they run like bullish and a couple other exchanges but they're going to have enough capital to grow that you know if we all think on this call that you know if you hold one bitcoin you know you might be one of the richest people on the planet in 15 years and they have 160 000 like eos is going to be then block one is going to be one of the largest companies on the planet so it's just a you know we're just in

an interesting world and you can under you know by just saying that alone you can understand why someone would launch something in an attempt to get attention first and build a business later. Because there are examples of something at that scale. Free money. Yeah, great. Isabel. No, I was just thinking like, what's like the corollary for generational wealth for companies, like companies that can just run as zombie companies forever because they have huge amounts of Bitcoin on their balance sheet. That's crazy.

It's MicroStrategy's model. I can't stop it. If EOS has become a holding company for Bitcoin and they intend to continue holding it... They weren't a holding company. That was the point. MicroStrategy is different. That's the point.

EOS is holding it too. They just became holding companies because that's the point like a lot of companies and then they just became holding companies because that's all they have right as value like it's i don't know but that's an interesting angle do these some of these just actually go public as holding companies at some point or turn into turn into hedge funds and start raising capital from the outside or something like that because you know when you have this huge amount of money you have to figure out something to do with it you're not just going to leave it there yeah there's no answer i guess yeah but it is very like um i don't know it it shines a huge light on a huge flaw in the space that we haven't

figured out yet or blackrock just buys them you know get that bitcoin on on their side i mean it's also it's similar to some of what we're seeing you know not to talk too much about the actual stock market, but Trump media, it's trading at like five gazillion times earnings based on the fact that people want exposure to that brand. It's just true social, which I think doesn't make money or is very low. And it's trading as high as I think Reddit or like Owens Corning. It's trading like infrastructure companies and it's, you know, I think people are just, they gravitate towards that attention and they want exposure. It's like buying Doge coins, like exposure to Elon Musk in a way, you know,

if you post about it or anything else and, you know, maybe you don't own SpaceX or, you know, you can't own that, or, you know, you can't own Twitter. You know, maybe you can own Tesla, but they're like, Hey, I want some exposure to what that guy's doing. Maybe I'll own Dogecoin. It's just, I think people are just placing asymmetric bets all over the place. So it's not just us. No, not at all. I mean, you look at wall street bets and Reddit and what happened there. I mean,

that, that was just, you know, I liked the stock and holding on with conviction to something that had, you know, was trading at, you know, thousands of times of earnings with no point. And then they've, they've partly that into issuing debt and, you know, building out a company to be something better on the backs of, you know, an audience and attention. So it's an interesting world that we live in, but it is real and it's happening. And some people play the market in different ways.

I think AMC, speaking of meme stocks, made a new all-time low today or something, or very recently I saw in passing. So... Cut both ways. Right. Tom? Yeah, to that point, I think financial nihilism is really an actual fundamental use case for crypto, right? People, younger people cannot buy houses today. They can't afford to live where they want to live.

And all of that stuff says, I want to get rich quickly. I want to take big swings. And you see this with sports gambling trends and all those other things that people are trying to get rich quick. And crypto really just plays into that, right? You see someone make 100x on a meme coin or even 10x on Bitcoin or something, you're going to want to be a part of that. So I think it really is a fundamental use case for the space.

Whether or not it's a good thing, I think is open for debate. But it really is something fundamentally inherent that folks are looking at from the outside lawyers from a legal perspective how are you viewing this meme coin explosion right now if lawyer's not there fred you can answer that as well because you're both lawyers well the uh the meme coin thing is interesting because you know the more you've got the identifiable person project behind it you know the more it is in that securities bucket and what i've what i know from what's going on at the sec now from people that are inside it and also really connected is they are just, you know, however much anybody wants to give them with their deep intentions and their plans, they are just absolutely overloaded right now. They don't have the

bandwidth to do all these things. So you can get away with it as long as, you know, the more you get away with, you know, having a meme coin factory really depends on how much money you've made, where you are in the U.S. Or if you're outside of the U.S. and, you know, how much of an easy trail you've let go back to where you are. So they're going to, you know, unfortunately, there's just a lot of aspects about creating these tokens that do get it much more to the security realm. And I've had discussions with projects on how to stay away from it and how to do your best. But in the Wild West world, you've just got a regulator that if you get too much on its bad side and they've got the bandwidth to go after you, they will. So just be very careful and be very cautious. And, you know, just give a lawyer a call before you go ahead and put that one out there.

Yeah, call the lawyer and say, we promise nothing, we will do nothing, and we will make it a complete joke, and then we're clear. It's like the anti-security. The closer you get to that, the safer you're going to be. You don't want to be in between and actually try to build anything or then you might be accused of being a security and get shut down. It's pretty interesting. And it's interesting that the SEC has created that environment.

I mean, these memes, Dave Weisberger loves to come on here and say this meme coin trend is the SEC's fault because they don't apply to the Howey test. They're so far below it that you can just go ahead and launch them and have fun. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. That's why. And the people figure that game out and now they're playing that game. And now the SEC has to realize that we're understaffed

undermanned we just created this gigantic problem and you know when if i mean obviously we all talk about it here because we're all degenning into these meme coins but it's still a small i mean a tiny fraction of what's going on you know in world. But if a meme coin does get into the broader aspect in general, that's when the SEC is going to start looking around. So it'll happen at some point, and who's going to be the target is just the question. Just happen to notice. Just rogue it before it gets too big, and you'll be fine.

Yeah, just noticed Bitcoin now down 68 68 600 and seemingly in the downtrend here so uh wondering what's going on i don't know if we have any analysts that uh have a view on that but uh uh have we haven't really been paying attention joe have mondays been generally mondays have generally been up right as we've seen the inflows they've been more bullish days yeah we've usually seen a little little bump in the morning on uh on monday but i think the broader market's also taking in tech is taking a little bit of a break um and we might be seeing a little bit more correlation um you know with with like the qqq with like sp100 um then you know i think we've been in our own

trading pattern a little bit here with crypto. And I think it's just kind of falling back into that. Like I was saying earlier, it just feels like we're in some sort of zone here with Bitcoin specifically around the broader market, which I'd love to ask the rest of the speakers here of and scott you too like what kind of gets us out of this zone trading here with bitcoin now that you know i think you know news you know people get a little muted to news over and over again it's like oh inflows are fantastic it's like okay they were fantastic last month um you know tell me like we need to trade on um you know for you know looking information and news.

And it just feels like there might not be too much out there that's super exciting. Well, sizable enough inflows, I think, just would slowly drive it regardless of the sentiment or news around it. But I agree with you that, you know, beyond the having, maybe there's no fundamental event people can look to to get excited about, which is whatever. We shouldn't need that well usually usually just all-time high break is the catalyst but this time it like just didn't explode through it so i think we're just waiting on that i think when it kind of takes a big leg up then that'll be enough for it but i mean as long as that happening it's just magic who knows yeah high price high price is the best marketing for last few cycles when it broke all-time high that was kind of when the mania started and this time

it kind of just simmered it was very strange yeah my theory is that it takes a doge all-time high this time to get people's attention because that's the asset that everybody's underwater on from last cycle as much as we wanted to believe that people were watching and buying Bitcoin. Last cycle, the real froth or the real mainstream adoption was Dogecoin and NFTs. So if those start to make new all-time highs or come back, I think that would get all those people really excited and back in the market for better or for worse. So Doge all-time high to me, Pancake, is a new Bitcoin all-time high. Well, I mean, we got Pudgies andgies in Forbes today too. So, I mean,

I don't know, things like that will keep happening. Sure. All right, guys. Well, I think we covered it. We'll dig into the price action maybe more tomorrow. See where we sort of, uh, settle out. Great conversation. I hadn't given much thought to the zombie treasuries of these companies. That was a completely new idea that I hadn't thought about much. Uh, something we should dig into more in the future. Thank you, guys. Follow all the panelists up here. They're up here because we like them. We endorse them. They're amazing speakers and offer amazing intelligence and insight into the market. So please do that before you go. And otherwise,

we will see you guys tomorrow. Thank you.