The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Falls Below $92K! Has The Bear Market Begun?

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

This Crypto Town Hall livestream dives into current Bitcoin market dynamics, debating whether Bitcoin is in a bear market, a sideways trend, or still part of a longer bull cycle. The panel, which includes traders, analysts, and industry participants, discusses technical indicators, macroeconomic liquidity, institutional adoption, tokenomics, and the psychology of market cycles. The primary goal is to cut through the noise and help listeners understand the multi-layered factors influencing Bitcoin and the wider digital asset market right now.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every week to hear at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on X. Very simple title today is Bitcoin in a bare market. We've had a lot of debate over the weekend, a lot of tweets going viral as to whether Bitcoin has even been in a bull market at all, whether it's entered a bare market, whether it's effectively been in a bare market for months. If you go zoom back a year, we're effectively a couple thousand dollars lower than we were on this exact date a year ago. If you look at the beginning of January, we're currently trading a few thousand dollars lower in the first week of January. So effectively at best, I think you can say Bitcoin's been in the sideways market.

If you look at all coins, of course, maybe a half a decade of fair market. I don't know. Very hard to argue that all coins writ large minus the Zcashs, BNBs in Solana when they've had their quick cycles have been in a bull market. Of course, we had calls for Black Monday coming into today. Has not materialized as of yet, but a pretty miserable weekend for Bitcoin holders as OGs apparently continue to sell. So we can dive in and unpack. the market, Dave, I don't know if you saw the tweet that I just sent to you in the group. This is really interesting.

Actually, I can just tag it above, but I just want people's opinion on this. CBOE continuous futures for Bitcoin Ethereum to go live on December 15th. I'm old enough to remember when December 15th or 17th was when futures were launched in the first place, was the dead top of the last market. good times and this is a perp perp swaps like is this bitmex coming to cb oe i don't even know dave are you there uh otherwise somebody else can we can certainly impact sorry i i i grant when i grab my mic i hit the mute button sorry can you hear me now yeah i can i just uh this was interesting news this is a factually perpetual swap i want to make two points really quick. The reason the original

futures was the dead top was because before that, no one in the United States had the ability to short the market at all. So it was the ability to short at the time at an over-extended

price level that you know, when I say over-extended, I mean over-extended. I mean, at the top of the market when people were saying Bitcoin hit $20,000 that first time, you never had to pay more than the $17,000 depending on which exchange you wanted to buy it on. It was literally that arbitrageable.

It was that frothy. And it's the kind of thing that was, it was easy to short and it was easy money for people. So, you know, that's why that was the debt at top. One could argue that unless I suppose that we were at $300,000 on December 15th, that, yeah, you know, the ability to, with being able to do, you know, run the product that's a more efficient, cheaper product will help you might, but more likely it is, it actually unleashes a new way

for people who have a very hard time going long on leverage, to go along on leverage. Because futures are very expensive right now, And what I don't know about the CBOI new product is, first of all, it's not going to be like Bitmex because I don't think, I think you're still going to need a futures account to trade, which means you got to go through a futures clearing merchant, et cetera, which means that the economics are going to be the same. The biggest difference in perpetual swaps is not just the fact that they're perpetual, but that it's real-time liquidation. the liquid, you understand, it's not, you can't, it's a limited loss product, meaning if you put 50,000 in, you can't get a call saying you need 250,000 more, you just get liquidated. And that's a very big difference. The other big difference is, is the spreads are really tight and the commissions

are really low. And that that's going to change. So I don't think it's that big of a deal now, but it does show something in terms of where the market is going. It's going to go and that direction, which is cheaper. But I don't think it impacts the price at all. That answer your question is a totally different situation. It's just eerie. You know, it's kind of the same. It was 2017 for the four-year cycle people.

You see that. And you have 21, 2021, 2025, December. Yeah. Yeah, if you believe that all of the crypto KOLs, the vast majority of them are calling for Bitcoin below $75,000 by then, in which case they'll have had this massive, you know, fall. And if that happens, then it's literally in reverse. Then December 15th or the end of the fall to begin in the next bull market. I know people hate hearing this.

I know people hate hearing this, but nothing would make me happier than Bitcoin below $75,000 in a month. My God. Guys, I have thought about this all weekend. hopefully you can hear me well but I have meditated on this and I have come to the decision that there are more sellers than buyers of Bitcoin right now.

Dude, that must have been 48 hours of sweat lodge. Intense, dude. Intense. Okay. Intense. The ayahuasca worn off yet because I know that was a steep deep deep.

Yeah, I mean, but that's we keep coming around to this, Gary. James Lavish said it on my show this morning. Matt Hogan said it on my show yesterday. I was saying it all last week. I should say I'm always surprised, no matter how many cycles I go through, how many people there are that hold this much Bitcoin that are willing to sell it.

We have the same argument every time price kind of stops. But you're talking about guys that have largely held for a decade and a half. who are just unloading billions at a time like billions it's pretty astounded I think I saw Amateo's hand go up yeah yeah I'm with you Scott I mean it's shocking I mean these guys have been holding for over a decade they've seen 80% drawdowns They've seen markups to 60,000. They didn't pull the trigger. They sat on their bags.

They waited for years. I mean, it's just shocking. The thing that, like, I can't get over it. It's like reverse KOL season. For KOLs, you're usually given money to shill projects. It's like, it's almost like a grand conspiracy where all these KOLs are being paid to just, air post. I've just seen, I mean, it's just remarkable. And I'm joking, of course, I'm just being

cheeky, but yeah, the overwhelming prevailing negative sentiment that's just popping up on the time line. I think that itself is a signal. Kelly then Sasha. Yeah, I agree with you. It feel. It's, I feel like an outlier being bullish here, but I want to qualify that. I don't mean I'm bullish. Like, I think the price is going to completely immediately bounce from here. I'm bullish on 2026.

I'm kind of, it's irrelevant for me what happens in price action between now and an actual continuing resolution where we have clarity for beyond two months. But when we look at, on-chain college posted a great chart this morning. which is interesting. It says Bitcoin short-term holder supply is hitting loss levels lower than the last two bear market bottoms. So you mean to tell me that everybody on X is correctly flipped bare at the exact cycle top? I don't think that's the case. I think what's going to be interesting in the near term in the next six weeks, primarily in the next two weeks, is on whatever bounce that we get because price doesn't go straight up or straight down so on whatever bounce we get this can be very interesting to see at what level that whether it's inter you know an

intermediate small very small bounce or larger bounce where it finds resistance on the way back up whether it's 100 or whether it's 110 whether it's 118 and what sort of what sort of other data other than just price that everybody gets so myopically focused on what other data is uh lining up with that what be it capital flow into the market be it what's uh going on with uh you know this the general flow in the markets it's it's just bizarre to me that everybody the majority of the of the market is flipped bearish here which i don't generally see the majority of the market ever usually having the best take of what's happening what's weird though is as bearish as everything is you look at the funding rates

and they're still very firmly positive so we haven't gotten that sort of capriculation moment as sad and scary as it feels we haven't gotten that everybody flipping bearish in in their leverage positions yet which is something i typically look for and a major difference too from the 109 to 74 and the 74 to 48 both of those those retraces pulled back into a previous range high. And so we're kind of in a weird position right now where we don't really have a range high to bounce on because we've already fallen through it. So it's just the ultimate choppination sort of marker right now where you've got to hold on to your buck. I'm on team sideways as well. Like just looking back, it's very hard to say that the cycle is intact when there basically was

snowball market in 2025. As I said, I do understand that there's the people who look at the Reddit post and it says October 6th at the top. And that's very convincing. And this is the one month when it should top if you believe in the four year cycle. But it's been sideways. Now, if I want to play devil's advocate, Kelly, because I am a bull, like I said, though, I'm a bull way down from here and actually want much lower prices. I have some money coming in. And I would love to buy Bitcoin a cheaper because that's where the money's going so i have a personal preference there but like the 50 the weekly 50 m a has been a line in many markets but certainly in bitcoin and these are limited data points as they will tell you that has been very key it has never had candle closes below it

in a bull market and has always happened as a bare market is starting we very squarely lost the 50m a around $100,000, $103,000 on this weekly close. And in history, once again, very limited data points. I'm not saying this is my argument, but this is a argument that I understand. We've tested the 200 M.A. That's at $55,000. I don't think Bitcoin's going there. But there's a lot of people who, you know, everybody has their definition of what to them is their technical signal if they're looking at charts.

And for a lot of people, the 50 MA is meaningful. and it's squarely broken, right? So, you know, no, I completely agree with you there. I think, and I've said this a number of times in the last couple weeks, I think we're in a tale of two divergences right now. We have major technical signals that really signal that we are in a very bearish circumstance and setting right now with the market on, you know, when you look at TA, but then you look at the other data, this sort of fundamental.

data that the problem with the fundamental data is there's no telling when it's actually going to you know percolate into the charts but you see the the two case stimulus whether it's on taxes or actually checks you see japan just uh basically preparing their 110 billion dollar stimulus stimulus. China's approved a stimulus package. The fed is ending QT uh apparently very near term the US is also issuing about 1.9 trillion dollars in treasure years per year. Canada is restarting quantitative easing. And it's like, okay, I'm with you, Scott. I'm like, bring it to 74.

Bring it to 60s. I'm looking at all this other data, and it feels like we're in the biggest gift setup of our lives. If we look at the outline of what is to come versus what it feels like right now on a four-hour chart. Sasha. Yeah. So if we look at the options market, what's interesting is recently this is mostly being put, people have been buying put, 28% of the volume is people buying put, 21% is about people buying calls, etc. And if you look at where the next big expiry is there's like 11 billion worth of calls expiring. during in on the 26th of December versus 5.7 billion on a derivative of puts. So if you look at end of year, it's still mostly calls that are sitting there. So it's going to be interesting.

If you look at also strike prices on those puts, right now the open interest is mostly around 90K, 8590K. So, I mean, it's going to be interesting. And I think what's really puzzling in the market is, is there are a lot of like counter signals and, you know, on the institutional side and we just had a big conference with the tie at called the bridge. I mean, there's so much institutional interest. And it's not like a year ago right after the election. People got really excited, but we didn't have the legislation. legislation in place. We didn't have anything that was starting to move yet. Now those changes are starting to happen. And I'm wondering if that might account for some of the, you

know, dumps that are happening with OGs where it's like, well, the culture is changing. This is not the culture I got in for. Time to take some. some money of the table. I wonder if that's part of the explanation. But my point is that, you know, institutions building products on top of crypto is going to take time. And we're like the unlock of people being able to work on those things

at those banks and asset managers is unprecedented. So it's going to be interesting. Eric, I think you had, I just wanted to jump in there real quick. It seems to me like the, you know, the past three cycles into where we're at right now, there's been clear opportunity to trade, you know, especially with the strength of the 2017

bull run, the very clear downtrend in 20s in 2022 with the cascading failures and you know 2013 but you know considering where we're at today especially at the end of the four-year cycle and all that sort of nonsense it feels like the silliest time to to really try to actively trade this market when there's so much contention in the data the landscape and also the shifting world the context that bitcoin sits in It feels to me like the primary focus, at least for me, is capital flow in my own life and how I can get exposure. And if I get better prices, it's great, but I'm going to, I'm going to huddle. I mean, I think we should go, you know, let all the other people with hands up talk.

But there are a couple things in there. Just could we please stop saying cycles like the having cycle matters anymore? You know, it's just, look, there was no all season, so there was no cycle. Now, you can make an argument, you can make on any argument you want to make, but please don't say that. Because it just isn't, it's just, there are political cycles, there's business cycles. There's bicycle cycles, you know, you can ride them. But, you know, there's no, there was no cycle this time. There was no rally.

There was nothing. So let's at least, that thesis is invalidated. doesn't mean that markets are going to do anything in particular, but do we have to keep saying that? We just say years, epochs, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, sorry, but the personal pay. Try this cycle, guys, on the border of Mexico, they're beginning to see real estate prices just collapse. You know, if there's people have estimated, there's 20 million people in this country illegally. If half of those

get, hey, I need to move back to Mexico or wherever they came from and they're renting homes or they have some type of home ownership. This would put a lot of fucking houses on the market

even if it's 20% to, three million houses. Is anybody seeing that? I had to Absolutely not. It's, well, I mean, there are a lot of people who are, and I see Robert up here. So I know, you know, we're going to talk about it later today.

The unaffordability of homeownership is a very big reason, very big that we have, that things are in. And I think that it's important to understand that when I look at Bitcoin, I look at it from an adoption point of view, which means it should go up even if state constant, but we are in a rapidly, rapidly depreciating, you know, fiat currency, you know, financialized world. And that is continuing and it doesn't seem like there's any shot of it changing. Anyway, I saw Sasha's hand up and Mark's hand is up and I saw Amateo's hands up. So, Sasha, I don't know if it was you first. Let me just put my comment first thing.

No, yeah, Eric, what was that? Oh, okay, sorry. I don't even know, Eric, I'm patiently waiting. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, Eric. No problem. So we discuss also Bitcoin and crypto in our financial show in the morning, but relative to all the other asset classes out there,

not just crypto by itself. And there's been a capital rotation going on for a while now. It's a critical capital rotation, as happens with all the macro events. Right now, Bitcoin is right on the trend line, right on it, 1995 is the decision point for Bitcoin technical perspective. What I can add is that, yes, as Dave was mentioning, we do have massive money printing, which keeps coming,

whether it'll be right now it's the Treasury, soon it'll be the Fed, which will go easing again. So over the long run, there's no job. It's going to continue to be along. Over a shorter period, you have to decide where do I pick it up for those special for those who are not invested in Bitcoin yet, you always wait for a retracement to invest in any asset, not only Bitcoin.

When you have a nice one, that's the time to get in. So for most of the audience who are still wondering, because adoption is still a minority of the population, right? Many people are still looking at, well, should I go in or not for the first time? The majority of people are still not owning Bitcoin. So the advice to all of them is that when you have a nice checkout, that's when you get it.

back to you guys. I think, Mark. So that. Hey, guys. Yeah, I just touch on a couple things. You know, Kelly, you're right. It's like when my wife was nurse in her kids, she took care of a bunch of other women in town in this group.

Yeah, I'm talking breastfeeding here, guys. We're going back to basics. Breastfeeding town hall. Let's go. And all these women, nice, nice, clear as mother's milk. That's what I say, Bitcoin's upside is. So all these women would come in and my wife would say, listen, are you getting seven wet diapers a day? Your kid's okay.

He's getting enough milk. So even though you can't see the process, you have to sort of step back and say you have to see the system. That's why I like Kelly, what you said about liquidity, keeping it smooth here. there's easing coming. There's totally going to be a gap. There could be an air gap that invites liquidity. So I would think that with Bitcoin at an extended 63 in NASDAQ, that we could invite a move lower with equities.

But I think that that would be a compression of the relative return. All this period means is no leverage, please, folks. And we're still getting those seven wet diapers. The system works, you know, it's tiers, not diapers that are bleeding right now. You must have been reading crypto Twitter because it seems like everybody has seven wet diapers. And anyway, it's good to be on here, but I've definitely been reassessing every thing and Dave I'm going to not push back but invite the the analog to this cycle in the past which previous previous cycles which we can say because they were cycles created

distribution from one to the other and we've had that in this period as well but from a different reason and we don't really know I love Sasha's point about maybe the OGs are just sick of orange ties on stages and are pulling out. I think it's much easier than that. Look, the closest analog, if you want to go back to cycles, or the closest period, was right after Paul Tudor Jones first said. And so after the V bottom in COVID, so it was around May of that year of 20, he made the Bitcoin as the fastest horse in the, the race and was the first one to really, first one from the traditional financial markets to kind of talk about the debasement trade. He didn't use those words. And he did it. Bitcoin was like between 9 and 10,000 or 10,000. It stayed there. It, you know, plus or minus, actually more

minus a little bit. It didn't get back to the level that he had said it until October. So it was the So you have May, June, July, August, once before it did a damn thing. And during that period of time, at 10,000, there was distribution going on where the people who were buying were people who were listening to him, people who were selling, were the, were crypto folks. And that went on until it stopped. It stopped in October, November, and it went to 10, to 12,000, to 14,000. And then in November, started to accelerate.

and then we all know what happened after that, we ended up at $60,000 in March. Now, am I saying that we're going to see a 4x? You know, when this thing finally, you know, stabilizes, no. But it is, that is the closest historical parallel. And it's interesting that it's literally one zero different from where we are today.

Right. And that is a very, very similar historical parallel for a lot of reasons. I think you're dead on. I'm just going to add to your point. Why did you say no? Yeah. That's what I'm not for X.

Dude, like, when did I see you pessimistic last time? Well, 30 minutes ago, but not on this topic. Please, Dave. So now we're at Forex. Why so bearish? Yeah, why so bearish? It's not. But it won't go, it couldn't go up.

Look, I personally think Bitcoin is 90% undervalued in the long run, right? So, yeah, I think it's going to, but I think that it has to stay along with whenever Bitcoin gets too far over its skis relative to adoption, you get euphoria and a blow off top. I just, you know, to me, you know, 4 to 6x seems like that would be exactly that. it would actually be worse, arguably. I'd rather see a slow, steady, grinding rally, you know, a double or whatever, you know, would be about in line. But yeah, you're right.

I mean, we haven't had euphoria in the Bitcoin market in a very long time. I mean, people think that we had euphoria because of ETS. No, we had some prepositioning, et cetera. We haven't had euphoria. Euphoria is when all those people who are running strategies and there are already, a lot of them, selling options of all in order to create yield on their Bitcoin, when those people

get gamma squeezed and they realize crap, I have to buy back. When we see that, and to think that that will never happen again means you expect Bitcoin to die. And I'm not saying it won't, but you literally, that is what you have to believe, because it is inevitable that that will happen again unless bitcoin dies so yeah that sort of thing could happen but that's that euphoria i don't think extends to be that high because they will then resell options at a new level etc etc so you know we'll see it it's a different kind of asset class as you get more professional because it kind of constrains the volatility of the upside to some degree not as much as people think because they forget about gamma squeezes But that's why I grow up.

I'm hardly bearish. If anything, I just, when I see extreme fear and I see all the K.O.L. saying stuff that I want, I've been bookmarking so many people so I can, I can dump on them in six months. It's crazy. Because there are some people who, their reasoning makes no frigging sense, but they just clickbait nonsense. I'm sorry. You know, there are some that actually are pretty good. and worth following, so it's not all of them, but it's just, it's a crazy, it's a crazy situation.

You know, we're seeing capitulation and we're seeing the end zone dances by the bears, and most of them are just comical. We're down my 26%. I mean, if that gets your bearish, like, tendencies flowing and you want to call it game over, than Godspeed, but there's about 40 or 50 bull market retraces of that size that would indicate you're probably wrong. Could be right, but probably wrong. Korav, I saw you lift your mic.

Yeah, it was all fun. I mean, today's conversation is good because it doesn't require a lot of brain for brains for people who have lived through it. But one of the funniest examples I would give is during the, during I think, 22, Defi was sort of thinking it was maturing and then these Tradfai guys started stepping into crypto with a co-founder of crypto and they were making option products and more sophisticated instruments. And so there were a bunch of protocols that were.

build closer to eigenlayer, right, but like sort of a leverage position over eigenlayer. And the entire idea was based on the fact that Ethereum can't retrace below 40%. And Bitcoin wouldn't retrace below 30%. Right. And so just, you know, while in that conversation at token 2049, I asked, of course, those were not the days of chat GPT, so I had to go back to one of my analysts. And he said, you know, for fun sake,

can we have just a number figure on how many times Bitcoin and Ethereum in the last 10 years have reached, you know, have been down 20, 30, 40 and 50% and the numbers were astounding. So I saw your post today. Scott, around the retrace, and like you just said, it's 26% down. Well, of course, nobody can deny anything in the market. Nobody knows what's happening ever. But. I think we lost him.

Gorov, I think... Yeah, yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah, we hear you know. There was a phone call. I'm sorry. This is tricky with Twitter spaces. They were better on phone, but phone keeps receiving calls.

So I was just saying that, of course, nobody knows nothing about market prediction, but at the end of the day, just as statistically speaking, and referring to Scott's post this morning, this definitely can't be, like the most solid reason to call it bears or the beginning of the market just because we're 26% down I think Scott got got crushed again yeah just calling me out of my disconnect that's what you get just as you as you as you talked about Twitter space is working better on phone. I'm actually using computer because I like the mic better. But whatever. I mean, look, you have a great voice to be proud of. Yeah, my wife says I have a face for radio.

Now, it's funny because my, as a debater in college, I was at Northwestern where they have radio TV film and a lot of people kept asking me to move into sports broadcasting because I'm such a sports fan. So I thought about it. We'll see. Right now, I'm thinking of do I want to narrate my own book that I'm writing? And I think the answer to that is yes, but we'll talk about that later. But anyway, as far as all this stuff going on, you know, there's been all sorts of commentary about the most important thing that feeds Bitcoin price, which is liquidity. So, you know, Robert, you're up here. You know, we're going to talk later.

But, you know, what are your thoughts on what's actually happening right now? Can I just post a question before we pass the topic to experts? Sure, because that's not my topic of expertise. I think just talking about liquidity, I don't think we can deny the fact that definitely the global markets and more reasonable and larger real institutions, not the crypto retail institutions we call institutions. sorry i think someone hit the the mute by host button and it wasn't me because i'm not hosting so not sure how that happened yeah i don't know and i was like the real institutions yeah so so they they have indeed lost confidence in the markets because of an amazing precedent, you know, playing around with the market, and especially the Friday

crash, the bloody Friday crash, and so many similar incidents. What do you think would be the reason? Of course, quantitative easing can be a small reason, but do you think it'll be a big enough reason to bring like an absolute bull trend that would sort of capitulate alt season i want just again requesting that topic to be included by experts as they talk about liquidity in general i mean personally i don't think so uh i think that there needs to be that the the rotation of money away that trend started on in earnest on post october or 10th, and I think that trend based on what we're looking at looks pretty high. I do think that you're seeing capitulation bottoms in a bunch of assets that I think are of

reasonable quality. And I don't want to go through all of them now. We can do that separately. I know you and I agree on several of those. But for new money to come in, you need something to go. You need Bitcoin and Ethereum to hold in there, right? you know, and in particular Bitcoin. And I think that when you look at the October 10th of the impact on Bitcoin,

it was devastating inside the crypto community and a shrug of the shoulders to most of the people who bought it this year and last year. You know, if you bought it the last couple years, you understand very, very well, you know, what you're buying. You're buying something on the come. And all you have to do is understand and look at, you know, what's going on and mining and the hash rate and all sorts of other indicators and Bitcoin that's alive and well. But the Bitcoin market is increasing and probably should increase. So I don't know is the short answer, Gora.

I think that new money is what's necessary. And when you see Japan announcing major stimulus, but there are worries about the carry. trade might, you know, be, could be imperiled because of the end devalues more. What will that do to hedge funds, yada, yada, yada, that's why all that stuff is interrelated. I'm curious, you know, other people might have opinions. Yeah, Robert. Yeah, Robert was called in initially and then, I'm too. I mean, I'm not the host, just, you know, just shows up and takes our jobs.

I don't even know why we're here. Well, I mean, you know, Scott, I don't know that you are here. I'm not needed here. I am here now. Now, I'm here. Briefly. Okay. Well, whatever.

Anyway, Robert, go ahead. For a good time, not a long time. Yeah, go ahead, Robert. Yeah, so the RRPs basically empty at this point. The Treasury announced back in July, I want to say, late July, that they'd be rebuilding the TGA, which is. basically the government's checking account the problem with that that sounds okay but that's removing cash right the rp being the shock absorber for the for liquidity for excess

liquidity that shock absorber is basically gone right so that from 300 billion to 850 billion that was originally announced for the tGA that can't come from the rp or couldn't come from the R.P, which at the time only had about $150 billion, had to come from bank reserves. And so what we've seen is if you go back to really the peak Bitcoin kind of double-topped there, but if you go back to like August, early to mid-mid August, that was when the TGA rebuild really started to to take effect when they started to really start to rebuild that. And consequently, bank reserves started to plummet. And we went from like 3.4 trillion in bank reserves down to 2.8. Now, the Fed has a lowest comfortable level of reserve that they don't know. There's, I don't know,

a thousand, whatever, we're going to the Fed, none of them know what the actual lowest comfortable level of reserves actually is. And what we've seen is a tightening of liquidity, both in the unsecured funding market, overnight funding market, interbank market, which is Fed funds. We've seen Fed funds actually tick up by five basis points relative to the RRP, the RRP award rate, which is that fed's lower bound for controlling the cost of overnight cost of capital. We've actually seen Fed funds take five basis points higher relative to that low bound. And not only that, but then, you know, SOFER, which is kind of everyone's new favorite talking point, that has been building going back to July or August.

If you look at SOFER spreads, SOFER minus IOR, or B. SOFA minus RRP, whichever one you choose, they've all been indicating the same thing on a, you know, medium to long-term basis. If you look at like a 10-day, 15-day, 20-day moving average for SOFers spreads, they've all been moving higher, vertical, basically, parabolic, going back to August. And so what this is indicating is tightening liquidity both on the unsecured, interoperable, bank fed funds market, which is about $80 billion per day. And then you also have a tightening of liquidity in the secured overnight financing market, which is so far, that's about $3.2 trillion dollars per day, $3.1, $3.2 trillion gets financed in this market every single day. And so you've had, at least in the U.S., you've had that dynamic starting to play out.

out. And Jerome Powell, very curiously, came out on 1014 last month, about a month ago, and started talking about SOFERS spreads. And I was like, you know, what is the Fed chairman doing, talking about the repo market and SOFers spreads? This is a very, you know, nerdy sort of, you know, boring sort of area of the market. What's going on? Then the next day on 1015, the Fed releases a report showing, Oops, we undercounted the amount of U.S. Treasury holdings from the Cayman Islands by $1.4 trillion was the undercount, the amount of the undercount. And you might be thinking the Cayman Islands, what is a $7 billion annual GDP country doing with that much U.S. Treasury holdings, well, it's all the hedge funds that are headquartered in Cayman? and they are engaged in the basis trade, which is highly levered, 50 to 1 to 100 to 1 levered, and it's financed in the repo market.

And in the Fed report, talking about this undercount, they actually mentioned, look, the basis trade trade has blown up many times. You know, this is a well-documented phenomenon or risk, I guess you could say, SEC, CFTC, Fed. And they've all written many papers on the trade and the risk. Robert, sorry to interject. Can you give like the TLDR and how it relates to Bitcoin and crypto market? Yeah. So liquidity is tightening. In the U.S. financial system, liquidity has been tightening.

So it's really no surprise to see, look, in 2019, we know this similar dynamic happened. Federalism was engaged in quantitative tightening. liquidity was tightening eventually at the repo rate crisis that that would have blown up the financial system i mean it was huge and what did the fed do they came in and they responded with quantitative easing they came in they printed bank preserves out of thin air then injected those into the financial system by qe like buying assets from the banks it's it's the same setup so yeah like liquidity is tightening in the short term both unsecured and secure, that much is clear.

But like the end result, or the, you know, you take it one or two steps further, okay, well, you know, if this continues to build the pressure, we know what the release valve is. It's not rate cuts, by the way. It's injection of liquidity. They might not call QE, but, you know, it'll be functionally the same thing as QE. So, so, you know, to your question, Scott, is. Nothing should surprise people in terms of Bitcoin being the most sensitive to liquidity, that it has fallen 20-some-odd percent as this has been happening.

And nothing should surprise anybody when the Fed does finally step in and realize that there's issues. And they start putting liquidity that Bitcoin will respond exactly the same way on the upside. That's the TLDR. Did I get that okay, Robert? Sorry, I just. Yeah, I mean, we'll do more detail this after. But for this, this audience, I think that's what they do. Yeah. Put it very, very simply, I'm going to be buying, I've been building cash for about

two, three months. And I will be enthusiastic, basically buying, scaling, you know, adding to my position over the next, you know, a couple weeks, month. There you go. Okay. I think we had, was it Amatoa and Mark, or Mark and Amateo? Scott, I couldn't. I have no idea. I'll jump in quickly because it's on Robert. I'm a tale if that's okay. Totally, dude. Thanks, man.

Robert, great stuff there. And the call for the TLDR, I basically got that when I did my substack last week going over this exact subject. And it was the least read because this shit is so goddamn thick and obtuse. It's really hard. but it is everything so if we can name that tune as a group on repo in three notes we're going to win the contest so yeah it's super important i understand it's like really dry but it's really critical this is how this is the plumbing of the u.s financials totally yep we're both right

yeah robert i mean as boring as it sounded it was one of the most intelligent uh some memories, though in elaboration, given so far. Very, very valuable. Thank you, sir. Yeah, Kelly, and Amateur, yeah. Yeah, sure, Robert, that was killer. And I was going to say maybe a less intelligent version of that, which is, Gorov, you know, my thoughts on this situation is that

there's plenty of liquidity to start to see the pickup in alts but not enough to sustain it right there's there's a lot of liquidity out there in the market it's still there but the tightening is is still real so i i agree with this sentiment where it's like essentially there's enough liquidity to start seeing risk assets get picked up but there's not enough risk on appetite for that to kick off. And I think we're just sort of line. The stars are aligning where we're in this situation where once the liquidity starts flowing in, and if stocks do correct, and especially AI stocks, that liquidity injection is

going to be even more traumatic because of the AI race, because of the cap-fax, because of the stock market because of the primaries, you know, the Fed chair replacement, there's so much that's lining up this way. So, I mean, I think at some point, there was a great post this weekend that was like, you know, entering a four-year bear market, like, where do alts go from here? Hell? You know, like, it's kind of a crazy situation. Do we expect the Fear and Greed Index to stay at five?

for the next three years. I just don't think that that's a realistic outlook on where we've been and where we're going. So I think once the risk on appetite starts to increase, we'll have enough liquidity to kick that off. The liquidity injection will come in, give the big signal, and that's where retail will follow. And that's when we'll actually have euphoria. And that's where we can actually have the conversation on how euphoric are we, and how long is this going to last? I agree with that.

I shared a chart up there in the top two. I mean, just looking at Bitcoin as a driver of the risk in the broader crypto ecosystem, Bitcoin's sitting, you know, we've basically gone 360 days roughly around the $100,000 level with a major deviation below when we crashed down to 74 and a major deviation above up to 1226 and the price essentially sitting right now kind of regionally right in the range of like an equilibrium of everything that's happened in the last year and so we haven't had like this clear you know as some people say thing or just oh this is a well-defined four-hour trend or weekly trend because we're getting

these nice runs that then consolidate and then break down and then. then these jumps that run back up. But again, 360 days sideways and this sort of geopolitical reshuffling that feels like any time, I mean, it feels to me more than anything like there's some sort of subversive coordinated effort on the back end to whether specifically to drive risk out of market and give good prices or not, it's happening. We're seeing every time the market goes well, we see Trump tweets that completely shake up any sort of risk narrative but what we are seeing on the the back end of that is a

never-ending sort of back-end development in integration especially in respect to stable coins uh so i do think we're going to see still some exuberance in the broader crypto market once we actually get sort of some sort of forward looking projection beyond one month two months or three where it doesn't feel like the ground's getting shaken out from under you every time there's a bid that's going to be caught. I'll quickly add while there's this, you know, awkward silence. Amato, I'm going to say something on the title of today and on the event of today, which is heartbreaking for me and for everyone.

But today we are celebrating bearishness. So economics is the killer of value in alt coins. like if we didn't had stupid tokenomics like we have today and all that unlimited supply and even if there's no unlimited supply the majority is followed or is held by like one or two or five key players just call them a cabal whether it's solana whether it's you know ethereum these days and and no matter what so tokenomics is the ultimate killer of old coins and so So at this point, you know, even if it's not an alt-coin season on an alt-coin run, I won't be surprised. And I'm just like sort of complimenting Dave's point on cycles, which is like there wasn't an alt-cycle or an alt-run.

And so it's not a cycle. Dave, coin market cap tracks six million tokens and don't even talk about coin gecko. And, you know, all of these have billions of tokens in supply, which is basically just held by a bunch of people and like a few hundred thousand people hold a small fraction of that token, not even the supply. And so that's how that bloated value is made. And the moment there's a bit of liquidity that rushes into a segment of that market,

these people start to sell. Now, just simply, you know, put this phenomenon, on the overlay of what's happening with Bitcoin and there's just about a few OGs selling it at 100K. That happens every day in alt coins. They would never probably be a massive alt-run or alt-rash-a-value that we have seen in the 18s and the 2020s of crypto.

We've just about minted too many tokens with very little value. I mean... Garrava, I want to... Sorry, Dave. I just want to point out my two favorite my two favorite coins until there was basically zero i will continue to say that that that the crypto market is sick and the all-kind market is problematic and that is eos and f tt if you can explain to me why there's why we're talking a combo we're talking both of them are have a larger

market cap than the average company that's included in the russell 2000 index of small companies those that we're talking same reason so same reason there was a majority of supply and I know we are digressing and digging too deep into one on topic but now that we're talking about it very quickly EOS a majority of it was bought as a cyclic process of increasing or hyping up the value and valuations during the 365 days of ICOs very little people know that it was not the 300 three some billion dollars raised. It was just a big Ponzi where the older money was raised in a distribution of

wallets to raise the, raise the supply or value of the upcoming supply. And those tokens are still held and dead in dead wallets. And so they will never be sold. And so that value always will sustain itself. The rest is sold or whatever is held. I mean, I never went back to my crack in wallet where I bought like three and a half million dollars worth of EOS, which is worth shit today. Right? So all of those people will probably never check their wallets and hence the value sustains itself.

Probably. Like 90% of that is. Your theory is $500, $600 million in value is sitting in people's couch cushions and they're too rich. Lost in wallets. No, no, no, no. Lost in wallets. Lost in wallets. Maybe.

But somebody owns. There's some circulating twice. People still, I mean, it's not a lot. I mean, if you look at EOS, for example, EOS has traded a whopping $400,000 worth in the last 24 hours. But that's people who have literally spent $400,000 buying it,

expecting the chance. But there is a living foundation. There are actually 20 plus living foundations. that have whatever you call it as a treasury, but it is a lot of money. So EOS is still not dead. I mean, again, I hate EOS for all the money I lost on it, but just a logical answer. Okay, well, whatever. I mean, the fact is the market caps, the scale of the market caps.

I mean, anyone in crypto, you can't forget that, and we all remember it, that BitConnect was worth over. a billion dollars for over two and a half months while on the top ban of coin market cap and crypto compare they called it a scam sir i would correct you i would correct you here politely it was not worth a billion dollars it actually collected cash billion dollars plus that's much bigger and different than actually good fine yeah Even worse, if their new tokenomics, this would be worth a hundred billion. Yeah, I mean, it's just, but the point is, is that the newer investors,

the people who are waking up to digital assets and believe in tokenization and believe in sound money if you're Bitcoin, whatever, whatever your reasons are, are not going to buy or put money into tokens unless they understand why it could be worth more in the future from a valuation perspective in some sense that's Dave you have a very optimistic perception of humanity you probably don't know about this thing called NFT and meme coins no no I know all about them I'm saying that it's it's I know about them I understand them and and look you look, if you're a poker player and you spend a lot of time in casinos, you understand that there's a degeneracy inside humanity, and we understand that people buy stocks. It's true in the

equity markets, too, Goro. People buy on momentum regardless. There are plenty of traders out there who, if you ask them the question, what does such and such do that they're buying? They'll say, I have no idea, but the chart's great, and the momentum is there, and I'm buying it. And that's fine. I freely understand that. What I'm saying is that the big, money on the margin, the money that creates the demand, the one that fuels an alt season is needs to have a reason. And there are a lot of tokens out there that could have a reason if it was cleaned up

with their token economics made more sense. And you're talking about that, you're talking about the money that feeds Nvidia and Oracle and Open AI and these companies feeding each other, that money you mean, the sensible money? I wouldn't use the word sensible. I would say at least they understand the narrative of what they're buying,

but a lot of it is momentum. I mean, you might have taken out. Yeah, yeah. I'll open it up for other speakers. I'm sorry. There are people who are buying momentum. And as a result,

when the momentum stops like it has, there's no there there, right? 100%. gold or silver in the video or whatever. Yeah. Right. Hey, Rich, you've been up the whole time. You haven't said anything.

I've seen some emojis. Anything to add to all of this? I've got stuck on that there's no cycle. I lost my kudos right at that point. And jokes aside. Yeah, I think I'm very intense on trying to understand the dynamics. of uh can you hear me i can hear you yeah sorry um yeah alt-season is is an interesting term i mean i definitely believe i agree with a lot that's been spoken about you know that the dynamics

have changed drastically i mean traditionally and you know what would happen was bitcoin dominance would top out you know the east bdc ratio would would start to pivot and you know, historically, whether you were trading in stable coins or not, the pivot point would be the fact that altcoins would start to outperform in Bitcoin value. And that was the rotation that we were used to. I just, I still have some, you know, questions around how new money flows into anything below top 50 on, you know, coin market cap. We're so deep in the rabbit hole that we understand these things and i understand you saying like momentum and but 1010 there's no liquidity if you go look at the volumes that we that have been trading

on anything below the top 50 um i don't know where fresh money that's coming in a big liquidity injection is you know how far are they going to go look into this and uh i i don't know i'm I'm scratching my head here. You know, so I'm juxtaposed. I'll tell you why I said, I mean, I speak to new founders and new projects on a daily basis. I've never been more excited about the future of blockchain startups look like. I think some of the best companies that we've ever spoken to are coming into emergence that are being brought to life. Can I ask a simple question, Richard?

So eight years ago, VCs didn't want to hear about the equity in these. companies, they wanted tokens because they wanted immediate liquidity. Is that still the truth? Or are we now at the point where people are saying, listen, we want to invest in companies that are actually doing something as opposed to tokens which can be immediately sold that may not have any path or even correlation into what the companies are doing? Well, most of them, when you ask a question around token, there is a token generation event on the horizon, you know, and they're in Web 3 for a reason. And by the nature of the fact that, you know, as an investor, you're offered either an agreement for equity, which was a token

warrant, mostly that remains the same. And, you know, so I, I like to believe that's the new iteration of old season, which probably needs to have a change of name because that, that denotes something very different to me. And I've maybe been stuck on this point in previous calls where it's always been a Bitcoin dominance topping out EPDC ratio, pivoting in Elkcoins is basically a rotation of capital, knowing that the big dog is pausing for a moment. What we're talking about now is that potentially,

you know, Bitcoin can continue to thrive relatively speaking and that new capital will come in by a stable coin, and it's completely bypassed Bitcoin and just go straight into. to a momentum trade in a other than Bitcoin crypto. Is that right? I mean, it's one of the reasons I don't believe in the notion of alt-season,

unless you get a massive run. Look, whenever you get a massive run, it's no different than, I'll tell a story. It's a nasty story, but I'll tell it anyway. So there was a person who played in our poker game 20 years ago. He was a doctor and he was a terrible, was a terrible player. I mean, really bad. Like, you know, I can't even describe it. And my friend who ran the game called me up one day, and we're just chatting because he's my childhood friend.

We talked all the time back in those days in particular. And he said that this particular doctor, the doctor called me up and told me he was in the Bahamas on vacation and he hit a jackpot on the slot machine or something and won like $15,000. And my friend's comment was, why did I just feel like I won a $5,000 slot machine? And we laughed. And in truth, in fact, he did because that $15,000 quickly made it into the pockets of the people who knew how to play in the game. Well, I don't think that that's all that different than all season. When Bitcoin goes up and people make a lot of money, they cash out and they try to play in all season and it creates momentum.

It's a self-sustaining degeneracy. And there's nothing wrong with that. there are some tokens and some projects that may be very well end up being worth a lot more the vast majority won't and so i don't see it as any different i mean or of you do you disagree with that because i know that that's me generally poking you so if nobody else has anything we're at 1115 we're at time you know it's like on this show you know we've been here we watch Bitcoin rally from 93-something to almost actually hit 96, right when we were starting, and now we're back to 93-something again.

So volatility is certainly back in today, but it's definitely, you know, all of these buyers and dumb buyers are being met by sellers and people are piling on and you have a lot going on. As I said, this kind of fear in the market generally closer to a bottom than a top, but markets could be irrational longer than you can remain solvent so be careful everyone that that's what i would say anybody else have concluding thoughts i yeah leverage is not good leverage it's not good and and i think we're seeing that you know the market is getting a lot of this bled out and we'll see you know we'll see what happens i mean you know look we talk every day

So, you know, it's not like anyone's going to change overnight, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of panic out there and a lot of fear. And generally speaking, if you're not levered, then you sleep like a baby. If you are levered, then you're like, oh, my God, am I getting liquidated? When that's a feeling that, well, frankly, I made the choice never to have that feeling again. I let it happen to me once. I won't say when. Thankfully, it was not a huge part of my net worth,

but it was one of those things that it's so maddening. So maddening when you look and you realize what it would be worth if you didn't let that happen. So anyway, that's all for today, unless somebody else has something else to say, we're going to call it here. And we'll see you all tomorrow morning at 10.15. Cheers. Thanks, Dave.

Cheers. Thanks, Dave. Thanks. Thanks, Mario, for always being available. The ghost of Mario and the ghost of Scott. Yeah. Bye. Thank you.