The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin EXPLODES to $72K as Record $3B Shorts Get WIPED

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Bitcoin explodes above $72K in its biggest upside move in years, wiping out a record $2.7B in shorts as ETF inflows return and majors start to lead again. We also cover Treasury stepping in with larger long-bond buybacks, Trump pushing for CLARITY while opening the door to Hyperliquid and U.S. perps, and Elon Musk exploring USDC payouts on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitcoin absolutely explodes to $72,000 as record. $3 billion in shorts get wiped. Bears got absolutely wrecked. I'm going to tell you my thoughts on this move, why I've been making hyperbolic titles about Bitcoin breaking $70,000 for the last month. Why yesterday we said that we thought that the consolidation was ending right before it happened. Spoiler, I've been making the case for Bitcoin bottom. since February and that case has only strengthened with yesterday's move. I'm going to unpack all of that

by myself right now and with Mr. Mark Yusko when he shows up because he did accept the invite and he should be the guest today. Let's go. Good morning, everybody and welcome to the moon. Wait, I think that's Earth and behind me, but I'm on the moon, right? I'm on the moon because Bitcoin went to the moon. Apparently now $70,000. $72,000 for Bitcoin is the moon. To be honest, the moon is like $126,000. But clearly something, something happened yesterday and there was a fundamental change. Now, once again, like you can go back. I'm wrong about most things like all the time. Ask my wife. Good. Definitely ask my mom. But I do get some things right. And I have been extremely, extremely adamant about making the case for a

Bitcoin bottom since February. We went down just below $60,000. I said, yeah, we might make some other small lows here and there. But most likely, most likely, we are now at the point where we will have six to nine months of extreme boredom before something happens. And what will happen next will probably be up. And it's going to be amazing. So I wrote long, I mean, I've written long threads about this. I did an entire Daily Wolf on it. I did an entire Friday show on it here. and I've been doing it for literally months. I mean, here's one tweet that I had sent. Let's see what this says.

The overwhelming consensus today this in June is that Bitcoin's headed much lower, and then I literally laid out every single reason I think that the bottom was it. Bottom still might not be in, by the way. But I went through it. And we've talked about it over and over and over again. The fact that weekly RSI was oversold for only the fourth time in history. That was one, right? Monthly, I can open a chart.

Look, we can do it. while we're waiting for Mark to hopefully show up. If not, I got this, guys. Okay, so we go to the monthly chart here on Bitcoin, right? I told you guys about this. 50 MA, right there. That is a bare market bottom line almost every single time. Weekly 200, right?

We can go back in history. It's only been below it for a meaningful amount of time once. That was FTX. Every other bare market bottom was tapping the weekly 200. RSI being oversold, one, two, three, and bullish divergence. Four times in history. This time, like the FTX bottom, massive monster bullish divergence. Lower low in price, higher low in RSI when it was oversold.

Right off the 200MA. And now, guys, I'm going to tell you, the daily, we've been under the 200MA since the bear market breakdown here at about 110. that red line yesterday was right at it. Today above, we need to close above that today. Every bare market, the first real signal that you're getting a new bull market is breaking above that 200 M.A. And then the real signal will come here at 82,800 if we get above that because that will be a higher high. But like, I mean, guys, this has looked like every single time ever that anything like this has happened ever.

And we also had sentiment and strategy selling and all of the other insane signals and insolvencies left and right. I mean, everything we've ever seen in the bottom of a Bitcoin bear market has been happening. And so now we can happily go up and to the right side. What do you guys think? Seriously, since we're here alone and we've been abandoned once again by a guest, never happens. especially not, Mark. What do you guys think? Do you think that we are now breaking into a bull market?

I mean, literally, did we all think that maybe, but do we all think that like all of a sudden on October 1st, I keep joking about this, that just because that's, you know, we've had it in the past that we were going to just break out and it wouldn't happen earlier or later? I mean, this was, as I said, as you may see here, this was the largest short squeeze in history. I mean, put that.

And that's a crazy perspective, right? bearish crypto bets lose record $3 billion as Bitcoin top $71,000. The only day that was bigger was October 10th and then we surpassed it. But that's crazy because October 10th was a crash. We saw it $3 billion in short, sequinated, almost, on a down day, right,

because of the volatility. But that day there was $19 billion total, $16 billion plus was in longs. I can go through it. There you go. Look at that. 3.24 wrecked total. Long, $261 million.

yesterday, $2.98 billion in shorts. Now, also, you may have watched a little show called The Wolf of All Streets, if you've ever heard of it, earlier this week, and I showed you a whole bunch of charts that said that open interest was extremely high with Bitcoin choppy, extremely low volatility, a massive move was coming. And it was most likely to the upside. It could go either way, but it was most likely to the upside. And that's exactly what played out here. So listen, I wrote a very, very long, we're going to keep going. But here, the last daily Bitcoin closed this large was in February. That was just the rebound from the 14, minus 14 day before it.

This one had no crash to bounce off. I guess its own 30-day volatility. It was a 5.8 Sigma move. I'm going to pretend I know what that means. The largest to the upside since October 2020, I do know what that means. It means that you're a really handsome guy that girls like. You're a Sigma. I think what we're trying to.

get here is that this is somewhat historic what's happening right here and with massive inflows to boot. But I guess the question that most people are going to have on their minds beyond where the hell is Mark Yusko is why did it happen?

How could this possibly happen to us? I can't believe, guys, I was just getting ready to buy Bitcoin and it went up. I had no time. You've had literally six or seven months to buy Bitcoin in the low 60s, if you didn't, I'm sorry. And congratulations, I'm buying it $128,000 on the way up.

Because that's what you're going to do. Right? People are stupid. Listen, even if it goes to 50, who cares, man? Buy 60. It's the same. If you think that Bitcoin's going to go up massively, it is exactly the same thing.

But why did it happen yesterday? Let me find my newsletter. So I saw an article that was really funny because it was Bloomberg and it said, you know, Bitcoin blasts off on, you know, White House comments. The White House comments were at like 4 p.m. Bitcoin had already gone up $2,000 in like one minute before that happened. And the answer to why it happened is threefold. We can talk about it in context of me.

I just sent this out, by the way. And it's got a link there. But it doesn't have Mark's face has Trump's face. Because Trump's coming later. You heard it here first. Trump will be joining the stream soon. Maybe. Never. Treasury blinked, Bitcoin exploded.

So this is what happened. You guys may have seen the Treasury announcement yesterday. Treasury doubles debt buybacks as Bacent moves to steady bond market. So what really happened was the major catalyst for this move before it was sparked by leverage. So let's just say that Treasury threw the spark, but the leverage was the gasoline, and then Trump came in over the top later and sent it

into the 70s. But in my very humble opinion, when Treasury said that they're going to double their buybacks for three months of long-term bonds, off-the-run bonds, and, you know, which means they're going to put out some new debt,

get rid of the old debt, and that said, uh-oh, Bacent has blinked. The bond vigilantes knocked at the door, as I said, on the Daily Wolf yesterday, and Bacent showed up with a checkbook, right? This was the first signal that there is too much pain in the bomb market, that maybe that 5.3% level that, you know, was the highest since 2007. Maybe that was the level at which the United States government said, this is unsustainable. We need to do something about it. So there have been some bad takes, right? It's not QE. Quantitative easing is when the Fed actually prints money. There is no

printing money here, so you can call it stealth QE. It is not quantitative easing, even if it is something similar by a different name. This is not the Fed. This is fiscal dominance, right? This is the treasury using money that is in the treasury account, aka your tax dollars, and buying off-the-run bonds, and then they will continue the Ponzi by issuing new fresher debt, right? But them saying that there's a price at which they will pay. A lot of people have been saying this is yield curve control. Turning Japanese. It's not yield curve control.

Yield curve control would be the Treasury saying, 5.2% is our limit. We will buy every single bond no matter what happens because we've hit that level. That is not the case either. But it is the first signal that Treasury is going to step in and we have a now meaningful idea of the level at which they will do so. That's what sent gold up. That's what sent Bitcoin up. By the way, Ethereum almost outperform

Bitcoin by double, which I view is a massive bullish signal for the crypto market because this wasn't just Bitcoin money. We had Ethereum, crypto money coming in. We had all kinds of additional evidence here that actual money is coming in. Of course, we'll talk about hyperliquid and what happened there in a minute. So I would say that once again, the sent, the spark, that a massive amount of open interest, sent Bitcoin absolutely flying and fast, shorts squeeze, shorts cover, those are longs, more fuel for the way up. And then, of course, we had the White House meeting, which I'm sure is here somewhere because I've got links.

I'm totally prepared for this show. Because I wasn't at all planning to do this by myself. It's fine. Elon Musk is to do some stuff, hype. There, there he is. Trump. Okay. So we knew that there was going to be a meeting. Look at the Winkle Voss back there.

Patrick Witt, our buddy, standing back there right behind the president. So, here, we got some clips. But there, so I told you there was going to be a meeting at the White House, Wednesday afternoon. Right? And that it was not just about crypto, but Trump did come out and make some serious crypto comments about it. He talked about buying Bitcoin for a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Mark's here. And he talked about hyperliquid, specifically, which we can watch.

He called himself a genius and said that the genius act was named after him, this guy. Very clever. So listen, I'm going to go ahead and bring on Mark and we'll continue the conversation from here. Hello, sir. Is it working? Yes, yeah. Sorry. I mean, too many things to just technical difficulties.

Couldn't find the link, but practically running around. Anyway. You know what? You gave me an excuse to brag about saying that I thought we were bottoming for months and that a big move was maybe coming. But I don't think we have full evidence, by the way, at the bottom is in. But this is a really nice, nice start. It's a pretty darn good start. In fact, it's such a good start.

Actually, I'll show you how good a start is. It's such a good start that I broke out the Bitcoin Bull sock game this morning. So, you know, I'm not officially ready to declare. I got the light orange pants instead of the dark orange. Because I'm not going to say we're at the bull market ascent. Yeah, but close. Yeah, I mean, it's nice to not be $64,000. Yeah.

So the case I was just making is that Bacent, I think, really sparked this with the bond, bond buyback program, right? Which is not necessarily yield curb control and not necessarily QE, but it's definitely them saying that they're going to be. yield curve control and QE. So you can say it's not. Like I can say I don't have white hair. Like it's kind of grayish.

But it just look in the mirror. And you know, I used to say it's a lot when Yellen was chair. You know, methinks the lady Doth protest too much. And the same thing's right. And you've seen the meme of Yellen's head with Besson's face. and, you know, anyone who, everyone says, Scott Besson, best, you know, most qualified Fed chair we've had. No, and I like, I like Scott. He's, he's a whole.

Here's a whole Twitter thread on that. Yeah. I've known him a long time. And, you know, Rubin, more qualified, some people before that more qualified. But, but he's definitely qualified. The challenge is, is he independent? And I don't mean independent of Trump. I mean independent of his old boss and the people behind the scenes.

I'm going to say no. So that, it's like Warsh, right? Oh, Warsh is such a dove. Then he gets in. He's like, sounds kind of hawkish. Well, okay, why? Well, because Trump doesn't get to tell Warsh what to say. The other people do.

So, anyway. I mean, the idea that Warsh is going to raise rates that that ain't happening. I think, oh, my mouse died. Yeah, look, hey, I don't think it's going to happen for non-economic reasons. Economically, yeah, I mean. Oh, I'm not talking about what they should do. I'm talking about what they will do. Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, here we, so I think, you know, the market said, holy, holy crap, like the bod vigilantes knocked at the door. And Besson, as I said, came out with his checkbook. So I think, you know, there's a certain level of pain here. And the market love that. Gold went up. Bitcoin went up.

Ethereum went up way more. And then we had the largest short liquidation in Bitcoin history. So we had extremely. That's all this is, right? I mean, to be, to be fair, that's all the last, you know, 48 hours is. And then a ton of gasoline and the leverage was the gasoline. And it is the largest liquidation of shorts. And I hate these statements, right?

Oh, it's the biggest in history. Well, yeah, because it's the law of large numbers. That's the way large numbers work. When the market was tiny, the dollars that got liquidated, now, percentage-wise, is probably not even in the top 10. That's right. Probably close. It's kind of like when you can, I mean, FTCs was only $1.2 billion in liquidations total,

and that was relative to the market was the end of the market. On 10-10, we had 19 billion, right? The market is, so, yeah. Yeah, and it's kind of like when people say, oh, you know, okay, the whole thing about the debt. Okay, the first trillion, you know, took 100 and some odd years, and now we just did a trillion in 45 days. And they show this stupid curve that looks like this rocket ship. Like, you can't show a 200-year chart not in log scale.

I mean, you just can't do that because the difference between one zero and one trillion is way bigger than between one and two trillion or two and three trillion or three and four trillion. So to go from 39 to 40 trillion, I mean, it's a big number. And look, I don't want to diminish the number. Like a trillion, you and I would have to stay on the air for 31,710 years and spend a dollar every second. That's a, I mean, it's a big number, but 40 versus 39, which is not a big deal. Can you hear the Benny Hill music playing while this goes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, there's 40 trillion dollars. Maybe Bitcoin, you know, like maybe somebody, you know, whoever drives this Bitcoin market was sitting behind the scenes, just waiting for 40 trillion to hit just to send it to be poetic. Well, you know, it's funny because I'm going out to Hong Kong next week and I'm going to speak it at Bitcoin Asia. And my topic is this exact issue, which is kind of the fiat fiasco that we are in. And the debt is the perfect example of it. And it's around this idea of, you know, we have financially engineered the world in which we live.

And Besson is the latest in the people who. who have manipulated that. And if you look at, let me take the yen market, right, oh, we're going to fix the yen. We're going to stop the yen from declining. So we're going to intervene. And like seven days later, it's right back to where it was. Because we can't stop the fact that Japan makes us look like prudent debt users. Their debt to GDP is way worse than ours. So they have no choice. but to devalue their currency and devalue it like massively. And we are stuck in a really interesting time in that when rates were going down for 40 years, it was glorious, right?

And, you know, that's the, we're all genetically blessed to be born in the United States, you know, those of us who are Americans. That's not a diss on any other country. It's just, it's relatively speaking, a pretty good point. place to get born. And I was blessed to be born in 1963 into my adult life has been pretty easy. From an economic perspective, rates went down for my entire adult life. From the time I turned 21 to today, rates went down. And now rates are going the other way. And that will cause stress. and Besson's latest move is an example of that.

And what I still don't understand, I don't never understand it. When Yellen was Fed Chair, she had the opportunity to issue 100-year bonds at zero. I mean, not exactly zero, but close to zero. And didn't do it. Just finished everything short. And now we got to roll over that short-term debt at four and a half, the math doesn't math. And that's why that Benny Hill music's going to accelerate.

And at some point, it does break. And it has broken throughout history. Every empire has had a period of dominance. Then they get fiscally imprudent. They overspend and they crack. Devalue. Overspend, devalue, and crack. I do want to ask you further about Japan.

I mean, it was curious that we did that intervention and it didn't work, kind of like when Powell cut rates and it didn't work. It seems like our things don't work anymore. But isn't that just about making sure that Japan doesn't sell off our debt? It was trying to, but they sold it anyway. And now we got to buy it. So it's all of it comes down to, look, Japan showed us the playbook, right? Japan government owns 70, or the bank of Japan, owns 75% of the bonds.

So everyone's worried about rates going up and the big losses. And yes, there are some insurance companies that have big losses and they're going to suffer. But bottom line is, if you own both sides, you just cancel it. It's kind of like the myth about Chinese debt. You know, everybody worries about, you know, Chinese debt so high. Like, well, think about it. The bank is the SOE. The SOE is the SOE. They owe money to themselves. It doesn't really count. So 40% of the quoted number isn't really real. So the same thing is true in Japan. And now we're going to do the same thing. We're going to keep buying our own debt because no one else wants our debt. Why would anyone lend the U.S. government spending $2 trillion a year more than they don't have? that's a crazy number.

Remember, I'm old enough to remember when Trump and and Elon told us they were going to get rid of the deficit. They were going to cut all the wasteful spending. Now, what it appears happened is Elon sent a couple of young kids in to basically steal all of our data,

like, so security numbers and all that stuff, so that he could use it to train his AI and then he left. And so there's been no, no change in government spending. Zero. I mean, think about that. So I don't know. It's, it's always had more.

We've spent more. Yeah, that was all a false flag, but, you know, whatever. But we do have Trump. So do you want to see what Trump said yesterday in his meeting? Did you watch any of these clips? I probably did. But go for it. I don't know which Winkle voss is back there, Patrick Witts back there, Mike Seelig.

But these are the things that people. So I think we had the spark of dissent yesterday. And then we had the leverage. Maybe that sent us 6970. And I think the last push was Trump coming over the top with the video. Oh, right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The time when the market was a little bit excited.

So we got a quick two-minute clip. Let's just watch it real quick. Launch project crypto to modernize rules. That didn't work. Markets can move into blockchain technology. I established United States strategic Bitcoin Reserve, making Bitcoin a permanent asset of the United States Treasury, which has turned out incredibly well. I also created the United States digital asset stockpiled the whole custody of all other digital assets,

and that's exactly what it's done. It's been amazing. One year ago, this summer, I signed landmark legislation known as the Genius Act. I named it after myself. I didn't want anyone to – I didn't want to use my name, so I just called the Genius Act, paving the way for widespread adoption of dollar-backed stable coins, and that's worked out very well. Every single American benefits enormously from our country's

status as the financial center of the world, and we want to keep it that way. We're leading by leaps and bounds. We've gained so much in the last 16 months like nobody can believe, actually. Not only that, but we have more money being invested in the United States

than any country at any time in history. Money's coming, and by the trillions. Our nation's economic dominance drives trillions of dollars in investments, creates millions of jobs, and expands access credit and capital so that every citizen has a chance to

achieve what we now hear a lot about the American dream. Young people are looking for the American dream. They weren't thinking about that two years ago. New financial technologies are extending this American dominance into the 21st century, and that's why we're focused on creating a clear regulatory

framework for pioneers and builders like the people that are with me here so that they can do business with confidence on American soil. They don't have to go to other countries to do their business. We're ensuring that America remains the undisputed leader not only in Bitcoin and crypto, but also technologies like prediction markets, artificial intelligence, and much more. Yeah, yeah, you get the idea. But, you know, he said, he said, we're going to buy a whole lot of Bitcoin and crypto assets, which, you know. I always marvel at people in in the age of video that say things that are provably false. Right.

Like things that like there is no strategic Bitcoin reserve. There is not. There is a digital asset stockpile that that did get past. There is no strategic Bitcoin Reserve that's been failed, attempted and failed many, many times. And there's video of all the times that it failed. And so I just, I find it. And when he says, it's, it's been great. Like, you mean that XRP that it didn't sell that was $3? That's now a dollar, really? That that's great. Pumped yesterday. Big day. $1.18. Ooh, $1.18, baby. Oh, $0.97.

I mean, look, here's. Provably false. Whatever. and I named it after myself, the Genius Act. Yes, the Genius Act is a way to preserve the Ponzi for a while longer, right? In fact, this goes back to, you know, you and I've talked about this before, that, and, you know, maybe the lights will go off. Because last time I talked about this, you know, my lights went off. People thought I got, you know, abducted by the black hats. I mean, it's a non-zero problem. I'm not saying it's true, but it's a non-zero probability that Bitcoin was created by the NSA and the CIA as a means to perpetuate the Ponzi.

Think about it. If you knew that your currency was destined for failure, right? And you saw all the evidence of that and you saw the spending and you just, you realize your only way out, right? You have so much debt. You can't pay it back. It's physically impossible. You could tax everything. everyone's wealth and you still couldn't pay it back. Forget their income. You can't pay it back. You can't restructure it because no one would take the other side. You can't default on it because then you're a banana republic and you get kicked out of office and politicians don't like that. So your only way out is to devalue. Well, so if you knew that was your only way out, hey, I got an idea.

Let's create this thing. Actually, a better form of money. let's get everybody to convert the crappy money into it and then we steal it now the last part and i've told you the story before you know one of our venture partners is the guy who in the bitcoin white paper has three of the eight footnotes scott stornetta yeah scott invented the word blockchain he and his partner stewitt haver and so he's a really smart guy and i said this one time and scott's an interesting guy. He lived in Japan, speaks fluent Japanese. He's in the white paper. And so we've asked him. So are you Satoshi? And it's so funny. He flashed back in the answer in Japanese. And basically what he says,

says, well, I might know who Satoshi is. But if I did, but if I did, do you think I'd really tell you? And since you don't speak Japanese, you have no idea what I'm saying to you. So this is the translation, what he says. And so it's kind of funny. But my point there is I asked him about this and he said, well, I never really thought about it. But yeah, that's plausible. But the way you're thinking about stealing, no, can't happen. There's no, there's no backdoor possible because of the air gap. But then he says, but with Ethereum, it could happen. Like, what? So anyway, it's kind of funny. So I'm not saying that that is the case. But if you think about the Genius Act, a last ditch effort to save U.S. dollar hegemony because the strongest currency in the

world right now is the rem and B. Right. And by the way, China kicking our ass in AI, kicking our ass in most technology. Have you seen the picture of they have a fleet, a fleet of robotic trucks? Yeah. We still are waiting for the Tesla Sema. Right. They have a fleet of them. And they follow around each other like ducks. It's like the craziest thing you've ever seen. So they're kicking our ass in all this stuff, which is why they're public enemy number one. But their currency has been on the rise.

And they've been buying gold. So wait a second. If your currency is strong, remember when Trump got elected the first time? He's like, we're going to have the strongest currency in the world because strong currency is the opposite. Yeah. And we've done exactly the opposite. Currency's gone straight down.

And a weak currency is what banana republics use, right? Because they want to sell their goods to the rest of the world. So they devalue their currency. So they have a trade advantage. And China used to do that. Remember when we called China currency manipulators? Because they were. That's what they did.

But the script flipped about 10 years ago. China's going through right now the 70s, 80s, and 90s. just like we did, right? When we went from a manufacturing economy to a consumer economy, and we did have for a period of time a strong dollar, and then it started to get weak starting in the 80s, and we became just consumers. And there's nothing wrong with being consumers,

but China wants to be a consumer dominant. And they said in their latest 30-year plan, right, like we can't even think in two-year increments. think in 30-year increments, from 1990 to 2020, their 30-year plan was to become a moderately prosperous socialism society. It doesn't sound very threatening. It was called the harmonious rise. So they wanted to bring all these people out of poverty, get them urbanized, and have a nice life. Well, now, from 2020 to 2050, they want to be the dominant socialist society. They want to be the world superpower and they want the rem and be to be the world reserve currency. So if you were doing

that, you would back it by gold because then it's real. It's not fiat. You would be stronger than all the other currencies around the world because you don't have the same debt problems, even though people think you do. And you can throw shade on, oh, their real estate market's collapsing or that. But if you go to China and you see what's happening, you see the urbanization, you see the modernization, you see 96% of AI citations are Chinese. Even in the U.S. If you've seen it, I love the meme of the Chinese math team, all China, all Chinese, right? The U.S. math team, all Chinese.

Right? So. Even in my hometown, they won like the national championship. It's Gainesville, Florida, and the whole math team at the public high school is Chinese. I'm not like literally just a factual statement. No, they're not. No, funny. My son, you know, pretty good at math.

in this special program, and he joined the math team club, and he walked over this table. There was three young. Again, I'm not being racist. They happen to be Chinese. And he said, can I sit here? And they said, no, this is a genius table. I was like, really?

Trump could sit there. Yeah, Trump could sit there, yeah, because he's a genius. And named the Genius Act after himself. I mean, I assume you're in the camp that the Clarity Act does not pass. Like I am. No way. No way. And, you know, I used to, I used to like the people who were like trying to push the Clarity Act. Like I used to be a pretty big fan of Senator from Wyoming and Brian. And, and then I saw the dirty underbelly. And it's like, no, you're lobbying for the same thing the banks are lobbying for. They like. not having to pay interest. Like, no, that's a bad thing, right? And they like the big spreads.

And look, it's good for, you know, my ownership of Coinbase, but it's not good for the average person. And when Brian Moynihan whines, and look, I should love Brian. Brian's a Notre Dame law school, not undergrad, but law school grad in Notre Dame. When he whines about, well, $10 trillion will leave the banking system, good. Then it'll force you to do the right thing,

is pay your depositors. a fair interest rate to use their money. Because I know it's your money now, because when you put it in the bank, it's the bank's money. But it was my money. And that's why I debanked myself from Bank of America. But it's, we're in this weird zone where, and it's not weird.

And it's not different. It's always been this way. Regulatory capture occurs because lobbyists pay for legislation. So the legislation, I guess not a surprise that Tether and Circle were named in the Genius Act. It is going to be interesting to see what happens with Tether as they're implementing. I mean, the Treasury kind of, you know, started the process. And it seems like right now Tether would be on the outside looking in, not with USDT, but not with USAAT, which is the only hope Tether has, in my mind, is you got to keep Lutnik in good graces. of the Donald.

Yeah. And if he falls out of good graces, then they've lost their, their play. And look, I, I want good legislation, right? I like guardrails. I like rules. I like to know what, what the rules are. But when you pander to the hucksters and the scammers, like this announcement two days ago, oh, we're going to bring back ICOs.

Man, you don't even need to be accredited anymore. I can't invest in your coffee shop. I am accredited, so I guess I could. But if I was accredited, I couldn't invest in your coffee shop, but I can go give you $4.99 million for an ICO, and you have four years to do literally anything. And this is what happens when, and look, this is what happens in an XRP army, come at me. this is what happens when I will say ill-intented people like Brad go lobby to get rules that favor

people over the masses, right? It's like the credit investor rule. The credit investor rule doesn't exist to protect the little guy. Are you joking? It's to protect the big guys. They don't want to share the good stuff. So you tell the little guy, oh, you're not smart enough to invest in these private deals, these pre-IPO deals. Are you joking? I mean, just because you're rich doesn't mean you're smart. And just because you're poor doesn't mean you're not smart. I know, I won't go there. But I know, I know lots of the opposite of both. And it's, it's just sad. But it's, it's not different and it's always been that way. And I was having this conversation with my wife

the other day. And, you know, she was lamenting all the stuff and, you know, her feeds just, you know, Instagram's just pounding everybody with all this nonsense. And so, you know, yeah. All that's bad and it sucks. But

irregardless of the people at the top, stealing, skimming, lining their pockets, people going to Congress, they're poor, they come out as multi-millionaires. That doesn't make sense. But as long as they don't harm the rest of us average working people, I can live with it. I don't like it, but I can live with it. And so far, I haven't been forced to move to another place because they haven't passed the egregious

taxes that they've been talking about. And they haven't done regulatory stuff that makes my business untenable. I mean, I've told I think I told you the story before. When Bank of America moved from North Carolina back to New York, the government here in North Carolina had the great idea. I said, well, why don't we just tax all the other financial services

companies more to make up for the loss? Well, you know, I'll just move to Nashville, right? I mean, so they didn't pass it. I'm still here, not in Nashville. But although I actually would kind of like to be in Nashville, it's a pretty hop in town. National is awesome. Yeah, National is awesome. Yeah, I don't think clarity is passing. I really got regulation crypto was a shocker. So I, you know, that we were just talking about. So I totally

am on board. I think the Safe Harbor proposal that purse has been making for years, it's great to see that in action, you know, four years to become sufficiently decentralized that you're not a security. Kind of eliminates the Gensler, you know, are, am I security, am I not? I like that you can kind of come in and register, right? Which was sort of like a joke over those years. But I don't know, I don't know, man. I'm all for getting rid of accredited investor laws everywhere. I just find it very curious that we somehow get the extreme lenient treatment.

I'm not complaining about it. But you know that. I'm not complaining. People to pay things. But here's the thing. Any place there is these types of opportunities. Right? Penny stocks.

Toronto Stock Exchange. I mean, you go lots of different places. Scammers are going to show up. Again, I've told the story many times of the guys who called me from Toronto. They're like, hey, don't you want to buy this new IPO? Cobalt blockchain. This was back in 1819. Like, oh, tell me more.

Like, oh, we're going to use the blockchain to decide whether cobalt came from a conflict zone. It's actually a pretty good use case. Okay, tell me more. How much cobalt do you have? Oh, we don't have any. Like, well, what do you mean? Like, well, we're going to go to the DRC. Like, oh, you're just going to show up in the DRC and you're going to get some cobalt, like what, from the little kids that are mining it? So I was like, okay, that's a problem. And then, and then so what, what public vehicle is, oh, we're going to do reverse merger into this gold mining company. I'm like, okay, so basically what you did is you did a Google search term search. And you said that cobalt and blockchain were the two highest terms. together and you're going to scam people out of, you know, millions of dollars.

They raised $6 million, not from me, but they actually raised $6 million. Never launched anything? Probably not. And it went to zero. No, they did launch. They did do the reverse merger and it went to zero because they never got any cobalt. And it's so scammers are going to scam and giving them a free pass to do ICOs again. Like, I'm still angry about the block one guys.

Yes. Right? I mean, I'm still angry about that. I have friends who bought their shitty token. They took the money and bought Bitcoin and the token went to zero. And that sucks. I mean, there's no other word for it. That just sucks. They've used that money since. Well, I think they're still sitting on a hundred and twenty thousand block Bitcoin or something. It's one of the great thefts because it's theft. I mean, it's pure theft because they never had, I believe, it's my opinion. I don't believe they ever had a plan or desire to build that token.

I don't. I think it was always about just taking the money and running. So now, I probably shouldn't say it because, you know, they're powerful, wealthy people. And that money has made its way into very popular businesses now. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like, you know, Brad's going to get the last laugh on me, right? I can argue all I want, all day long. A $275 million note or something, right?

Well, I can, I can argue that all day long, that it's a scam. But by taking real money that people paid you for the scam token and, buying real businesses, right? That could actually turn into something. I mean, at least they're still here. But yeah, this was, I think, yesterday, Ripple Prime closes 270 million senior note offerings. So, I mean, clearly they're able to raise legitimate institutional money now to become a Wall Street player. Once again, whether that accrues to the token, who knows? But Ripple's clearly building a serious business. Yeah. And, you know, bravo. They did it and I didn't. So,

but I yeah the people who and I know and I actually know unfortunately a few of them people who own XRP thinking

that somehow that money's going to them it's just delusion pure delusion and if you perpetuate that fact even by kind of intimating that you might get some benefit

I think that's wrong but I've said I would rather own equity and ripple obviously than the token not even Whether the value is going to accrue to the token or not. And I've been very unpopular with the XRP people for saying that. But my argument even can be because Ripple owns most of the XRP tokens.

So if you believe in XRP token, wouldn't you still rather own the people that own the thing that you like than to just own the thing that you like? Like regardless of any of these other conversations, like, they still own what? 30-ish? I don't know. 30%. Feeding the ducks. Feeding the ducks is an age. old process, right? There's a company in the in the bubble back.

We're going to get so much trouble when they clip this, by the way. And I'm not even saying anything negative. No, look, Broadview is a great example. So husband-wife team, they owned 100% of the company. They floated 1%. You said Broadview? Yeah. The private equity?

It was a company years ago in, in, it went public and then went to zero. Yeah. At one point, the stock got to $20,000. And I think it's Broadview. It's a husband-wife team. I had friends who worked at a investment bank called Broadview in Fort Lee, New Jersey in like 90. No, it wasn't investment bank. This was a public stock.

Maybe it's not called Broadview. Anyways, broad something. But with public stock, they listed 1%. Like even better than Elon listing 4% of SpaceX. I mean, you can manipulate the hell out of 1%. And the stock would go up and they would sell. and then the stock would go up and they would sell. And they sold until the stock cut to $20,000 a share.

And then it went to zero. But they didn't give the money back. And so I say the same thing about SpaceX and people go freaky on me, but it's... Oh, SpaceX was the most... I mean, SpaceX and I don't know if it, whose fault it is, but it was mathematically programmed to go down. It's science. It's... There's no tellers.

There's no sad. They were only buyers and the only people who can sell were people who bought. Yeah. And it's weird, right, Scott. It's so weird that you can just say things now in markets and they become true. Like, CEO just says, my company is worth X. Like, that's not how it used to work. It used to work that buyers and sellers determine the value of things.

But now we have so many passive buyers, just the index fund. Like the index fund doesn't get to think. Like S, S, you know, SpaceX goes public. You run an index fund. You have to buy it. You don't get to say, well, no, I think it's a stupid price. You just have to buy it. And that's a weird dynamic.

And now more money is impassive than active. And so, and if you short something, you can just get decimated. And then this is the part that bothers me the most. There should be a rule that, you, if you own a bunch of stock, you shouldn't be able to set up entities that buy that stock to squeeze

the shorts. That should just be a rule, but it doesn't seem to be a rule. You know where I will give credit, like having the EOS conversation, 5 million from unaccredited, non-accredited investors fundraise, it's still only 5 million.

So I think there's, you can play little, you know, play but like they can't raise 6 billion or whatever even. I'm just thinking this through in real time that maybe like if we're calling balls and strikes, you know, they can't pull off anyos. Amen.

And that, that, you know, and that, and that's something. And right. And we have to take the things when we can get them. And some good will actually come on that. I mean, there will be real people that do real projects and kind of crowdsource it and, and hopefully create real stuff. You know, look,

Reg 144, right, has been abused for years. Any rule that relates to money, people are going to find ways to abuse it. So I, but I'm with you. That's a very good point. By capping it at a certain number, you can't have the crazy abuses. Okay, so just, I mean, just circling back to the beginning before I let you go. I mean, this could be the beginning of something. I agree that right now it's a technical,

massive short squeeze, right? We needed to see some follow-through, some indications. I mean, generally laying the, do you think we're in the four-year cycle and, you know, kind of thought. A hundred percent. We're in the four-year cycle. Look, I'm not going to go so far as to say, like, it's a total simulation. And, you know, the guy that told us the date that it was going to peak.

And now he's told us the date is going to trough October 5th. I'm not saying it's that, but it's pretty close. And it's because humans, total the opposite of the matrix, humans are going to human. And humans believe that stuff. And humans lever up at the wrong time and cause the cyclical peaks. And then they sell at the wrong time and they cause the cyclical bottoms. I mean, I think you tweeted out the picture. Like the capitulation in this cycle is the highest ever. And it hasn't even been, it's been the least bad cycle. And yet the capitulation is the worst. Humans buy what they wish they would have bought

and they sell what they're about to need. And they do it over and over. Like the stat that still makes me cry. If you just bought bonds for the last 20 years, you made 5.5%. You bought stocks, you made 8.5%. All you had to do is pick one or do 60, 40 or any number in between. But what the average investor make? 2.9.

That's hard. It's hard to suck that bad. Well, it just said. It went viral two days ago that, you know, active managers under, like 76% of active manage accounts underperformed the S&P in the last year. But then I looked into it and actually it's usually about 13%. So they did pretty good this year. Yeah. And it's because it, well, that's because in the last 20 years, the passive percentage keeps rising. So look, the S&P is not passive. It's slow active. And it's a momentum strategy. Momentum strategies work when liquidity. is expanding. We had the highest, highest liquidity in history. This is crazy, right? We have the loosest financial conditions in history, despite the fact that rates are high. And the fact that the Fed is not

doing QE, we had the loosest. I mean, it's just, it's just data. And so China's pumping out money. The world is pumping out money. Prices are rising like crazy. We've been above the Fed's target inflation for 65 months. Is it even a target if you've been above for 65 months? I mean, I would argue it's not a target anymore. So we can't control the profligacy of spending and the implications for our currencies. Therefore, assets like Bitcoin will rise and gold. But then the market, then why'd they go down? because we also allow large institutions who shall remain nameless do naked short. And you're not, again, you're not supposed to be able to do that. But in the futures market, you can get away with that.

And that's why these short squeezes are so violent. So the only thing I say why we're not out of the woods, and I don't want to lend on a downer note. But in every cycle, in every four-year cycle in history, the last month, so that would be September. Oh, that's September. Yeah. Right. The last month before the pump, we have one last cathartic dump. And the most painful, because I remember like yesterday, was in 2019, you know, after the,

the spike in 18. We went from six to four. We were six, 3200. Yeah. We went from six to 3,200 in two weeks. And I remember, it's funny, I was actually on CNBC on December 6th, the morning it hit 3,200.

And it's the funny part of that story is, is what should we do? And I said, well, it's funny you should ask, because literally yesterday, I challenged Warren Buffett to make a charity bet. I would take Bitcoin. He would take the S&P. And someone told me, if you call this number after 5 o'clock, he'll answer his own phone. And you can ask him. So I did. And he did. And I literally talked to Warren Buffett. And he said, I'll take under consideration. And he sent me a nice letter, right? The assistant typed, typed by. And I think it was actually on a typewriter. I was saying how to type. And it said, you know, I reviewed it with my partners. And

they just think I'm too old to take this bet. I'm like, no, you're going to be chasing my scrawny ass around well past your hundred. But he didn't take the bet. So we issued it. I issued it on television broadly. I said, anyone who wants to take the other side, you take the S&P, we'll take Bitcoin, and Palm Jason and I were going to put up the money against their money. Only one person, and I won't name names, but only one person said they would take it.

And his son said, dad, no freaking way. No. If we win, we're supposed to win, if we lose, everyone don't think we're idiot. So no, we're not doing it. So no one took our bet. Obviously, it would have worked out. But so I do worry between now and October 5th, there is chance for one more flush. And again, I'm not predicting it.

The problem is. But like one more flush before we go up to me is the same bottoming narrative as opposed to like, we're going to flush and then stay down there for the end. Oh, no, no, no, we're not going to stay. No, we're going up. Buying opportunity. We're going to peak in 29, and it's going to be glorious. And look, the reality of this is the fair value is material higher than where we are today. Now, can we get further below fair value?

Yes. We have. The good news, there's not a lot of long leverage. So the reason we had the flush in 19 and the reason we had the flush, I mean, yeah, 19 and then again in 22, was because there was too much leverage. I don't think there's that much leverage now on the long side. So I don't actually think the flush is going to be as bad. The problem is there are no big up days in bull markets. They just aren't.

That's right. The market that goes up a little bit every day and goes down a lot on bad news or perceived bad news. A bull market is a market that, I mean, a bear market is a market that goes down every day, right? But goes up a lot on good news or. perceive good news. So I still think we're in the bear market. We will get to a bull market, but we need three higher highs. Yeah, you got to make 2,800 for the first higher high. So we're not even close to that yet. Right. Yeah. So we'll get there. Well, Mark, thank you. As always for joining. I apologize for being late, Scooter. But you stayed late. But you stayed late. So that's hard.

And no, I love doing this and congrats on the show. And, you know, it's always fun to be here and always fun to howl with the wolf. I'm on the moon. Should we howl? Should we give another how? We've done this a while. Three, two, one. Oh!

Good one. All right, Mark, I'm going to let you go and stay on for a couple more minutes. Thank you, ma'am. All right. Awesome. On the moon. Still just realize that I'm sitting here on the moon, which is a lot of fun. So I have no idea what this is, but my team just sent me this and said, play it.

So I will show you first, I guess. I guess here's the tweet. Somebody made. Bottom signal waiting room by Scott Melker, AKA the Wall Fall Street, been calling it for months now. God, I'm going to look so bad if it does go back down again. Today is not the day to clone, but they sent me the video. Let's see what it says. Bottom signal, bottom signal, bottom signal to me.

Bitcoin trading around $62,000. dollars and that is that more than 50% of all bitcoin purchased is now at a loss. I don't know how they believe we get to 82,000 with no flows, but I would bet that that trend massively turns around and them declaring that right now is yet another absolute massive bottom. Ended periods of extreme fear or fear. Those are more bottom signals than top seals. Take a look at hash rate, right?

You can't really even buy right now. And that's also not affecting the price. To me, that's more of a bottom sale. Yeah, yeah, I guess I've said bottom signal a lot. bottom bottom signal like next week it's going to be like bitcoin forty seven thousand dollars that everybody's going to be going back and they're going to be yelling at me that i said bottom signal and uh mark and i we're getting so much trouble for that xrp thing it's bad it's fun it's fun it's whatever man you know good for them like you said

they're they're uh they're billionaires and we're talking about it from our fake moon base um Super embarrassing. I have to go get ready to do another show. We got this show called The Daily Wolf. I got a recording today with Bill Barheight for the podcast. Man, we're doing a lot over here. Got some new show ideas that are coming, some really fun ones that I think are going to be great. So, yeah, tune in it.

So listen, maybe we're back in a bull market, baby. You know, if I had my little thing, I would do the air horns I used to do. And I would do, you know, pump it up. You've got to pump it up. But can't do it. Get copyright claims. It's been a pleasure. Have you all here.

Bottom signal. Bottom signal. Bottom signal. You are all my bottom signals. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow.