The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Hits $42,000! Where Are The Bears? | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

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Hey man, how are you? I'm good. I thought you were having headset issues, so I was remaining silent. Yeah, I know. If I don't kick it off, it's just that awkwardness that happens every time it's so silent. I love it. We could use that lo-fi music that Spaces has built in. Yeah man, the market's uh scott the market's uh sorry pretty uh your initial thoughts before we kick off the show i mean what is there to say right to be bitcoin uh made the run to 42 000 did it fast i think it's leaving a lot of people in disbelief and behind obviously uh i think now we see what

comes next i mean 42 000 to me is always kind of one of disbelief and behind, obviously. I think now we see what comes next. I mean, $42,000 to me is always kind of one of the major levels on the chart, which I think we can discuss more as we get going. But it's really encouraging to see this continued push. It's being led by Spot, which I think is amazing. I was digging in, by the way, really funny, just to give an idea of how degenerate people are in this market. I'm looking at a coin glass right now. I've got the liquidations up. And there was about 310 million in liquidations in the last 24 hours. Only 59% of those were shorts, meaning that 41% of the liquidations on this move up to 42,000 were longs.

Just to show that people who are long were getting liquidated on the tiny moves and retracements back so how does that so how does that work so you mean it pumped and then they wanted to come in because they got four more yeah let's say let's say it pumped and at the top of a candle you go in with 100x leverage and then price drops one percent quickly and then goes right back up and you get liquidated man this is why i'll never do i'll never trade it's just it's i don't know how people could live with that lifestyle i'm not sure i don't know if any traders christopher i think is a trader but the rand is here as a trader but i don't know i don't know how people can use love i'm not a trader but i'm not a trader but i i made the terrible mistake

of um waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom using my phone as a torch. And then I see notifications from all the exchanges on my phone. And I thought, you know, like the first thing I saw, I was like, shit, this could only, like usually you get notifications when you get liquidated, you know, like you're about to get liquidated. And I saw a lot of notifications. And I thought, oh my goodness, what's happened? This was 4.30 in the morning.

I looked at the Bitcoin price. The Bitcoin price is at 40,800 or 40,600. I was like, there's no chance I could go back to sleep after this. So I don't know how the traders survived because, man, I had one night of this shit. And I've been up since 4.30 in the morning. But you were preparing for retracement before this uptick. I know it doesn't surprise you. You did say that an uptick was possible, but you were preparing for retracement before this uptick. I know it doesn't surprise you. You did say that an uptick was possible, but you were preparing for retracement, correct?

So, yeah. So what I'm preparing for is I'm preparing for a 30% correction, 20% to 30% correction. I lost you, Mario. Yeah, I thought it was a buy-in. Yeah, when it's going to happen, I think it's going to happen somewhere around the ETF. And either because the ETF is denied, there's not enough inflows into the ETF, it's a buy the rumor, sell the news event. I'm preparing for it. What does preparing for it actually mean?

It means I've sold all my fund positions, like all the stuff that's non-core and I was playing it because I was just playing leverage and just having fun and whatever else closed, closed all those positions and kept obviously my portfolio. My key portfolio remains the same. And I'm trying to accumulate a little bit of cash because I want to be able to buy the dip. And like the last thing I want is the dip to come and me, and me sitting on the side saying, I don't have any cash. And to be honest,

right now I'm in a position where I don't have much cash. So over the next couple of weeks, I'm trying to build a healthy cash position so that when the dip does come, I can actually jump in a bit. The only risk is that if the dip comes from like 48 to 42. That's fine because my core portfolio is intact and it just feels like it's getting overheated now. I mean, you probably saw what happened when we touched 42 and then Bitcoin pulled down a little bit

and then the altcoins nuked like it was a quick recovery. But nonetheless, the altcoins nuked like it was 1999, bro. It's crazy what happened to altcoins. So, yeah, I mean, i'll give you an example so i was short ustc against usd because i just feel that i mean there are a bunch of delusional people that are buying ustc because i think it's going to go back to a dollar and i just think that it's crazy so every time it goes above six cents i short it. And I always leave my, to close the short at like $4.8 or something like that.

And I had those orders in and I got back to my laptop and all those orders had been cashed in already. So I'd taken all my profits without even, it took me a couple of seconds to take all my profits. So it's like, you know, that's, I think when, if Bitcoin goes down now from $42 to $38, can you imagine what's going to happen to altcoins? Yeah, I mean, to your point, for people who weren't watching the market effectively, Bitcoin was at 41,000 to 41,500, made a relatively quick move up to 42,000.

Bitcoin dominance obviously was already rising. So your altcoins were going up slightly in dollars, but generally down against Bitcoin. But what happened next was Bitcoin touched $42,000, dropped immediately down about $500, and altcoins went down about 15%. They bounced relatively quickly, but then they were down about 10% further with Bitcoin at $41,500 than they had been 30 minutes before when Bitcoin was $41,500. So just to give you an example of how quickly the liquidity can move from one to the other. And this is just something classic that you see in every single cycle. And it's actually, it's kind of, I think, encouraging to see it repeating again.

But when Bitcoin really gets going, your altcoins are going to be, you know, the old meme, even in USD down in BTC. How's the, can you just, before we go to the panel, can you give us a bit of an overview? How are the altcoins doing now? How's Bitcoin dominance? Do we expect altcoins to continue following Bitcoin? Have they already followed Bitcoin? Because I did see that the NFT market seems to be doing really well. One of the points in the agenda is that Pudgy Penguins hit 11 ETH. I haven't looked at how big of a change that was from their previous floor. And when I see NFTs do well, obviously these altcoins and degen plays are doing well as well. I mean, Bitcoin dominance, from what I'm seeing, is 54.2. It started the day at 53.3.

That's a massive move. And just last week was down in the 52s. I don't have the chart. I posted it earlier. But listen, Bitcoin dominance is reactive, right? It's what you already know about the market. You can see by looking at prices when Bitcoin is running and sucking out the liquidity. Just one of those moments. Bitcoin goes up fast. Generally, people fumble out of their altcoins and into Bitcoin. And then when it chills, back in and rinse and repeat. We'll see if that continues to happen. So what do you guys think will happen next? Scott, 42,000 was always an insanely key level. I've tweeted about it constantly. If you guys remember when the market topped on the first run up from 20,000 in January of 2021, we'd had MicroStrategy buying Bitcoin sort of being the catalyst for that market. But then Tesla bought Bitcoin, we saw the price quickly go from 20. It stopped exactly at

42. And if you look back at the chart, 42 has kind of been the mid-range support and resistance for all of the huge moves up and down. So I just think it's a very, very key level. Not a surprise at the minute it touched. We saw a lot of profit taking. Go ahead, Rand. Yeah. I mean, I think my thesis is the same. I think, look, we've run too high too quickly. And the problem with the market is the market is a very short memory. So they're not going to remember that. I'm just quickly getting a chart in front of me so I can actually give you accurate numbers. But no one's going to remember that.

What are we in today? Let's say on the 30th of November, no one's going to remember that we were at $37,500, right? So if we drop by $4,000 now, that's going to be scary for a lot of people, right? And when that is scary for a lot of people, it's actually only back to the levels that we were a week ago. But people aren't going to have that perspective. So what am I expecting now? I'm expecting $42,000 to be much harder to break.

I think we're going to take a little bit of a breather. And I think that when the breather comes, I think that some of the altcoins are going to cool down quite a bit. And I think what you need to do is you need to be looking at the bounces. You need to see which narratives are bouncing the quickest. And the narrative that's bouncing the quickest, because we're very early in the bull market. People say we're 28%, 25%. We haven't hit the parabolic part of the bull market. Regardless of how you look at it, we're very, very, very early in the bull market. And so in the early stages of the bull market. Regardless of how you look at it, we're very, very, very early in the bull market. And so in the early stages of the bull market, the market's giving you clues as to which

narratives are going to run, which tokens are the hot tokens for this part of the bull market. For example, we know right now it's a Solana season. It's not an ETH season. We know there's this whole Deepin narrative. We know that there's an AI narrative, which kind of falls into this whole deeper narrative. We know that there's an AI narrative which kind of falls into this deeper narrative. So we kind of know all of these things. And now the idea is now to just see

which narratives are bouncing and to take our bets. Yeah, I was just looking at the NFT floor as well. Oh, wow. Okay. Not recently, the last few months, but in the last few days, a few weeks even. They should be way up in dollars regardless. Dollars, yeah, but I'm looking at in ETH terms.

So bummed I never bought a punk. Broken. Still time, buddy. I don't know money there. I was being sarcastic. But yeah, let's go go to the panel who do you want to go to scott so lawyered and then i i would love lawyer to have his hand up then i'd love to hear chris since obviously uh he's our uh resident technical analyst go ahead lord yeah i just want to say that you know the prices are great and of course as you said big things can happen quick like a drop

and you shouldn't be leveraged but i think what people in the space are feeling is, regardless of the price action in particular, there's something in the air that's back. And it's money back and interest back and, you know, even just people who thought they were gone that are back. And I think it's absolutely, Grant's actually absolutely right to say that, you know, there's all these hints about the future narrative um like solana and you know blast tvl flipped solana um in like a matter of days and they're they're locked till february i mean it's just clear that this is not the same um ethos or feeling that everyone's having um it's like regardless of price we're back baby you know i think it's we're so back baby we're so back Chris hey can you hear me I'm a max not working Chrissy yeah okay great yeah Chris um you know again nothing here that Chris up there I don't know why Chris you're Mike you can't

hear it I can hear him all right yeah all the mic is yours then Scott to moderate okay I mean um you know different than anything I've been talking about for the past year. We hit that 42 area, as Scott mentioned, was an important area to hit. We're in this ascending channel off the bear market low from last November, last year. If we continue rallying here, I mean, the top of that channel is around 45,000 or so. So I don't see that as a really difficult thing to hit. Usually the market retraces 61.8% before the happening. And that 61.8 is right around 48 and a half thousand or so so just a bit higher. Something I work with a

lot retraces back up just to be clear saying retraces back up from the lows, correct? Well, while they retreat Yeah, yeah, exactly retraces the bear mark. A lot of people hear retracement, they think price is gonna go down, but it's a retracement of the move down. Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, exactly. So, um, you know, and the other thing I do is, is, you know, I use pivots pretty extensively. And I think last time I mentioned that we were coming in pretty

aggressively into the daily pivots. And or maybe I just mentioned to our people, but anyway, we have we've rallied in sideways between the pivot, the r1, we rallied up halfway into the r3. Usually, most often when this happens, we rally through the r5. And so again, the R5 gets us right up there around that 49,000 area. So I don't know that I necessarily think that we're going to get a pullback at the moment. We could. But, you know, for right now, you know, until we actually do, I'm going to keep looking higher up toward the upper end of the 40s into the lower 50s.

Man, that would be fun. the lower 50s. Man, that would be fun. Mario, could you hear any of that or no? I'm so pissed off because I really wanted to hear Chris, but can you just recap? I can recap later. The recap is he doesn't see any reason we stopped before 48,000 to

50-ish. So there you go. Chris, I'm bringing you back up because I wanted to get your thoughts on how altcoins have performed. I know Ryan has kind of touched on it as well. But I'm pretty deep in the altcoin space. We incubate projects so we get a lot of altcoin allocations. Is there any movement

there? And I'm not talking the altcoin, the top 100, top 200, a lot of startups, etc. And if anyone also has an update on it, Scott, don't get pissed off. But on the VC funding side, I know it's pretty lagging. Usually it's lagging. Is that picking up as well i'm not sure chris if you can answer those i've brought you back up so maybe i can hear you now chris can you unmute sorry guys there was a little bit of an issue here hey oh good oh good now i brought you down and back up yeah so so chris you need my questions no no go no. Go one more time, please.

Yeah. So I wanted to get an update on altcoins, how those performing, because obviously, or at least from a selfish perspective, we hold a lot of altcoins. And I'm not talking about top 100, top 200, I'm talking projects that just launched. And I'm not sure if anyone, Chris or anyone has metrics on the VC funding side, please do jump in right after Chris. Um, yeah, so I don't have those particular metrics, but, uh, you know, generally speaking, uh, you know, markets, uh, so when Bitcoin, you know, as long as Bitcoin is doing this rallying thing, uh, you know, a rising tide lifts all ships. So there's few alts that, you know, there's very few alts that won't follow along. And you know, it's pretty much I think somebody's posted before it's throw a dart, you know, throw a

dart at the dartboard season, basically, everybody comes off and starts, you know, think thinking they're experts at trading because everything just kind of rallying up with with Bitcoin. But I you know, I it's as long as Bitcoin continues doing its thing. I mean, I think I think you're good in with alts. And I don't think there's really a whole lot to worry about, honestly. William Simon.

Yeah, just quickly, William here. What happened in the last few days, so 40,000 was more of a psychological barrier, more than a technical one. There was nothing technical about 40, so it passed through it very quickly. And then it helped make the headlines, which then got us to 42, which is a real barrier. But right now, I think the way I see it, there is lots of expectations in the air waiting to be fulfilled, mostly centering around the expectations that the ETF is around the corner. And if we don't see an ETF by January, I think it will be a bit of a warning. It could go back down to 36 maybe.

But on the upside, the big, big resistance is going to be 46. That's what I see when I look at the big technicals from my end. Simon? Yeah on the VC side I can give you some data from Bank to the Future. I think in the last three months we've had about six, a lot of secondary market buyback requests. So we had a share buyback from Bitfinex 10x from the last round. We had Bitso, where there was a lot of old VCs looking to acquire some of the more like companies have been around for a while. We had BitPays, that's an old one, come along. So we started to see a real flurry in corporate actions. Some of the mergers that didn't come through.

So there's definitely been an uptick in active exodus as well. That was one we did. They're looking at a couple of public offerings lining up as well. So I think the institutional activity is starting to see some of these older school companies that have been around for like a decade or so now and survived much of the different cycles. So that's what we're seeing on the VC side. I mean, let's take a little bit of a reflection on this Bitcoin cycle, because it definitely feels to me like previous, you know, the start of other cycles. And it just

seems like it's survived everything. The big thing about this cycle was Bitcoin's never been through quantitative tightening. It's never been through a pandemic. It's never been through inflation. It started on a fiat currency bank crisis before it was launched, but we had another one this year. It had a crypto deleveraging situation with all the centralized stuff. We had a massive regulatory crackdown. We had more banks actually go and bust it with the breakdown of the infrastructure. And yet Bitcoin just went through every single cycle as it did previously. I don't want to speak too soon, but it just really feels that way.

Now, there was also two other major differences. Anyone that's been through a Bitcoin cycle of accumulating over a four year period has always been good, in fact, very good. But now we're seeing that at the corporate level. So MicroStrategy is now demonstrating to the world that when everyone was ridiculing them, they were just accumulating, accumulating, accumulating, ignoring price, continue accumulating. And now it looks like it could be one of the most valuable companies depending on what happens next in the story just can we just talk about that for a second so yeah i i actually spoke about it on my show today where we said like you know sailor was ridiculed

people said like he made a mistake now sailor is now up two billion dollars 2.1 billion dollars on his bitcoin purchase as of the second right um that 2.1 billion dollars is more money than micro strategy has made in all its existence combined they haven't made 2.1 billion dollars and what i think is going to start happening here is you got you got this like double whammy because on the one hand other companies are going to see this and go hold on a second maybe this bitcoin thing isn't such a bad. It was a bad idea for a couple of months, maybe 12 months or 20 months. But now look at what these things are doing. The other thing is that the accounting laws have, or the accounting rules are being changed as of next year. And that means that companies in the US don't have to write down

their Bitcoin to the lowest point, but they can rather mark them at fair value, which means that they can account for gains and losses, whereas in the past, they could only account for the losses, and it made these companies look actually quite bad. And so I think what's going to happen is people are going to look at this and get huge FOMO and say, look, there's no reason from an accounting point of view not to hold it, which was one of the biggest barriers. And now look at the sailor guy.

He's done this, and he's just made $2 billion. Hold on a second. I also want a bit of that. And I think that the price is the best advert to get more people in. That's a really good point, Ran. The gap accounting thing is a major, major difference with all of these Bitcoin companies and coming through. So anyone that now follows now remember Michael Saylor was the idiot

that came along and started doing it when everyone said are you buying at the top you know the price is going down look at what's your average price so everyone's going to look back in four years and say I how every cycle I've ever seen people always always saying, I miss the boat, I miss the boat. What else am I looking for? Now, Michael Saylor comes along and shows that you can now manage corporate treasury in a way where holding hard money actually outperforms the economic performance of your company. Who else is going to do that? Well, President McKellie was also ridiculed. The Bank of England was concerned. The IMF wanted to no longer lend any money. It's got about $26 billion of IMF and national debt, but it's also

accumulated a core holding throughout this whole position that is now in the black as well. So McKellie gets to go around and show everyone, holy shit, all you have to do is accumulate into a four-year cycle. And eventually, maybe that position, maybe just maybe, might be something that actually outperforms and becomes more valuable than the IMF loans and everything. And actually, that happened in the past. Bulgaria confiscated Bitcoin from a group of criminals. And the value of that Bitcoin, And when it went into the government, it just disappeared into corruption. But it's actually worth significantly more than the entire national debt of the whole country. Countries are going to see that. Companies

are going to see that. Individuals have seen no matter what you throw at us, a China ban, all the mining operations just relocate. Whatever you throw at Bitcoin, it just seems to follow this cycle. And now we've got the institutions FOMOing in and the regulators saying, if you can't beat them, join them. Let's get rid of the market manipulators and let's give this to our industry. But we all still get to hold it, money we can own, money in our own thing without having a financial institution in the middle. So I hope everybody

that has been following these spaces for the last four years has experienced that and takes a reflection in early 2024 and says, what am I going to do differently in the next four years? Because this time four years ago, everyone that was doing this said, I missed the boat, it's too late, and they were being ridiculed. David? Yeah, believe you me that, you know, I am a crypto bull, generally and have the majority of my net worth, or at least the largest position I hold in any particular asset classes in crypto. But with regard to Michael Saylor, I also happen to

be the CEO of a publicly traded company that is looking for a new line of business. We just sold off our oil and gas assets. And getting into crypto is a lot easier said than done in terms of a publicly traded company. Your foray into crypto, at least at this point, when Michael Saylor got involved, it was an incredibly speculative asset and he took it and ran with it. But, you know, getting it past your board and also, you know, weighing what the public's reaction, your public shareholders' reaction is going to be. I think it's going to take a daring few to be the pioneers in doing that, as opposed to, and I totally agree with Simon on the fundamentals of why treasury is better managed through crypto. I agree with that. In terms of the adoption of that thesis, I think it's going to be long. I even think the ETF is not going to be the watershed event that starts to shift treasury focus functions over to crypto as a real way to manage treasury, maybe in foreign

lands that may be the case. But in terms of in the United States and in the developed world and in terms of mega cap companies, I think it's a while from when we go ahead and get into that narrative. Yeah, and the way to interpret that or the way I interpret that is that means you've got another cycle until a massive number of people figure that one out. So all those people that are saying I've missed the boat, it's too late. We'll be back here in four years time. And there'll be another bunch of people that haven't quite figured out how to put it on their corporate treasury. And they've been waiting for another country to adopt it first. And we've got several cycles, I believe, until a lot more people have figured it out.

I'll second that. I'll second that. And it's funny that the oil and gas assets that I sold are in Argentina. So I know Argentina incredibly well. I know the motivation, the real motivation in Argentina, certainly for stable coins. And I think over time, it will become, especially as the younger generation become more powerful in those countries in terms of occupying the seats of corporations in those countries that are now occupied by people in their 60s, they will go ahead and more increasingly and quickly go ahead and adopt. And certainly,

if the country is going to go ahead and dollarize its system, get rid of its bank, we will get there. I want to go back to just look at the market right now. And Drew, I see you're up here. Let me go to Sam first. Sam, I'd love to get your thoughts on the discussion so far. And then we'll go to Drew. And John, I'm glad you're here as well because I've got a question for you when it comes to the SEC. And I think as a federal judge, it was pretty critical of certain actions by the SEC. So I want to see whether that has that has a much impact on, uh, on the SEC in

general, but Sam, go ahead. Yeah. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Um, I wanted to touch on what William was saying. I think I'm sorry to interrupt you. I don't want to be, I'm not sure if you can improve your mic. I don't know if it's a bit muffled. It's still muffled. Uh, we can understand what you're saying, but yes, it's not perfect. Why don't you go to somebody else? I'm trying to fix it. Cool. Yeah, Drew, I wanted to get an update on that. Rand is a big follow-on investor. I want to be kind of thoughtful here in NFTs.

So I'm not sure if you can give us a bit of an update here and an update on altcoins as well. I'm going back to the market a bit and then we'll go to Sam and then I want to kind of ask an evil question to john drew are you there gm friends yeah i'm here um yeah it's a it's a fun market right now we're in the pre-bull period uh getting ready for the bitcoin halving and the cryptocurrency ensuing bull i think this is going to be a huge one with the etfs and just all the things coming along this could be the biggest bull run we've seen um maybe ever so i don't think

it's going to be a super cycle but i think it's going to be a huge one and then maybe the next one's the super cycle so that's my thoughts it just worries me that i'm a pretty anyone that says super gets out of me it just worries me that everyone is so bullish and no one is contemplating any kind of correction or pullback

and everyone's just it sounds like we're all drunk I just don't know how long we can all remain drunk for yeah Sam what do you think

alright John are you there so while waiting for Sam to fix his mic can you hear me, John? Yeah, I'm here. I'm here. Yeah.

Do you know what, I'm just opening up my notes here and we've got Lloyd here as well. I'm just opening up my notes to see the, but do you know which one I'm referring to with the federal judge that was pretty critical, criticized the SEC? I got it. It was the head box. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He warned the SEC, so I've got to hear from point s he the he won't

the attorneys that he may sanction them for allegedly convincing a court to freeze a crypto firm's assets under quote false and misleading pretenses and he goes on to say uh the sec's misrepresentations undermine the integrity of the case's proceedings in addition to causing debt box in irreparable harm how common is this this? Does it mean much? Are we looking too deep into it? No, I think what it shows is if this was a one-off, everyone could dismiss it. But you have to take this. What the SEC did was they basically got a TRO, a temporary restraining order, against the company by lying to the judge, lying to the court about the underlying facts. They basically, the banks had closed accounts, ironically, because of the government's

crackdown, chokepoint 2.0. And then the SEC tells the judge basically that this company was, you know, closing these accounts, spending the money overseas and going to rug pull customers and whatnot. They lied. And the judge found out, called him out on it and is now threatened to sanction them and I believe will sanction them. And everyone can dismiss this. Oh, this is just one one off. You can't. Every single time the SEC has stepped in the court, they have been chastised, reprimanded by the courts, whether it's arbitrary and capricious. In the Ripple case, a federal judge literally said the SEC lawyers lack faithful allegiance to the law. That's a direct quote

from a federal judge. You go to Voyager and the judge is saying, the way you're acting, I'm not going to talk to you in private. Say what you want on the record. It's just one after the other. And so I think that what this demonstrates is this anti-crypto agenda is real and it's to the point where the scc will actually lie to the federal courts to to get what they want let's not forget this started with library where the scc told library in a non-fraud case over a couple hundred thousand dollars, we will bankrupt you in legal fees and then proceed to do it. So I think what we have is, thank God we have a judicial system that is holding the SEC accountable.

And I'm looking forward to seeing those sanctions come out. Yeah, I'm just going through it now. Stephen, Simon? Yeah, I'll add another one that um the sec is coming that was under the radar as well um just because i'm involved in it um but for 18 months judge glenn begged the sec to tell them if this plan for celsius to re-emerge and turn into a public mining company um was going to happen. Every two months, every quarter, the SEC would turn up and say nothing, nothing, nothing,

nothing, nothing. And then finally, the plan is approved 21st of November. And on the same day, the SEC says, yeah, that's not going to happen. And so wasted literally nine months of creditors money, which costs $20 million a month. And then says, but we may let you do it if you take the staking out and you do it just as this, but we won't comment. But you've got to put a form in. And now you've got to wait another 90 days and we'll have a 60 day comment period. And at the end of it, we might reject it anyway. So, you know, and literally the judge was begging the SEC through the whole case,

speak up now, we do not want to get this to get to the end and you have a problem with it. But here we are. Stephen? Yeah, I just wanted to give you like my personal experience that this agency has gone completely rogue and they are after all of crypto. Yeah, but we know, but we, but Steven, I think we, we all know this, but I think would you, sorry, I want to add a question. Yeah.

I want to hear your experience, but also I had a question too, if you don't mind, like have the courts kind of put them in their place? Like have we, should we, should we should should actually be less concerned seeing time after time courts going against the sec and pretty pretty aggressively as well i'm i don't think so because the problem isn't the agencies are cooperating so like the fake prosecution against me the civil sec and that list that they gave with everybody in crypto, that came from the SEC, not the DOJ. So the courts can do all they want,

but as long as these agencies are cooperating with each other, there's not much they can do behind the scenes. And they tried to hide it. Now, I got lucky in the fact that I was able to uncover it, but how often does that really happen? I think you've got a bigger problem here where these agencies are

cooperating with each other, and the courts should beat them and do whatever they want, but they're still going to continue cooperating. Yeah, I want to, by the way, Scott, go ahead, Lloyd, before you go in, Lloyd, get your thoughts on this. Scott, what I want to do after we finish the SEC discussion,

is I wanted to ask a question to everyone. We should do this every time the market recovers. I think it's important we do it every few days. What narratives excites them? I think it's really, really cool to do. I want to do this more often. But let's go to, and maybe if Ryan, I want to bring him back up to ask him that question. But yeah, sorry, go ahead, Lloyd.

Yeah, I mean, I just don't want, I don't think you can overstate. It is important, right? Like, so maybe I think there's a lot of truth to what Stephen said. But when you have an unelected organization like this, that's taking too much power, all you have is the courts to slap their hand. And I think that when they do slap their hand, it changes their risk profile of, you know, doing things that are heavy handed. So, you know, i think it's relevant

yeah and is there any concerns that the sec could uh would you say this is the achilles heel of the current bull market is that the sec eventually gets a few wins and uh and uh you know take a few steps back and we're no longer as bullish as we are john is there a possibility for that to happen or lawyer i mean i I think in the grand scheme of things, no, but also understand that the comment that the last speaker said about perception is very important because if we rewind three years ago, no one dare go against the SEC. What the SEC said, you don't fight them. Fast forward now, and it is emboldened people. It is emboldened entrepreneurs. Not that they have millions and millions to fight the SEC necessarily, but those that might have been inclined to settle may more be inclined to fight now. And so these court decisions are very important in the long term and i'll i think the bullishness is more than just price action like i said you know if you're if you're in the in the space and you're looking at you know you're raising money for projects or you know actually have your face in it then you see

that people are just acting differently it's not because bitcoin's spiking in fact that might even make them you know a little less excited to sort of take some liquidity out and invest it's it's really just the feeling that this is you know it was all it's almost binary right like this is either not a real thing crypto and bitcoin or if it is it's the only hard money ever existing and these projects are all revolutionary so you know i don't think that this bull market this bullish tingle we have in our fingers is just based on like they can they can get a win they might hammer down bitcoin a little but i don't think that this is going away yeah it makes sense john go ahead let me just add that january 17th is the oral argument in the coin base motion to dismiss before judge failure in the southern district of new york i think that's a very

important hearing and i think that that's going to give us some real insights, because as I've said before, I believe that Coinbase has the legitimate shot to at least partially win the summary judgment. And so that be the final big victory for crypto, because if the SEC loses, they'll have to go to the solicitor general to appeal that and I don't think the administration especially if the judge starts discussing about major questions doctrines the things that nature that they're gonna risk a in the pellet court hammering them and restricting the administrative straight state let's just put it that way.

I don't think the general will grant the ability. Just walk me through what the next step with Coinbase versus the SEC is. Well, it's a motion to dismiss basically where Coinbase has said that because of the major question. Basically, the SEC doesn't have a jurisdiction. And I've said that there is a chance. Now, normally, the motion dismissed like this, I'd say it's less than 10% chance of victory. And I've put the Coinbase motion at least partially to be up to maybe even a 40% chance on Judge Felia. If you look at her decision in the Uniswap and you look at the language that she's used in the first couple hearings with Coinbase. Let's just say that I think there's a chance that she could say that secondary market sales, not direct sales from the promoter,

but secondary market sales in a blind bid ask transaction, how he does not apply as a matter of law and also rely on the major questions doctrine. I think Judge Failure has, you know, the intestinal fortitude to do that. Now, the staking part of Coinbase is more complicated. So that's why I said there could be a partial victory. But if there is a victory where the judge says that Coinbase wins because the SEC does not have jurisdiction on the secondary market sell, there isn't a case in history that has found a secondary sell of something that may have even been an investment contract before, that the secondary

sell is also. And if she basically says the SEC does not have jurisdiction and agrees with Gary Gensler when he first said that there was a regulatory gap, that these exchanges fell outside the purview of the SEC or the CFTC, that is going to be potentially the biggest victory we get. That's a pretty good summary. I mean, if we could see Coinbase actually defeat the SEC there, that would be, I think, just a massive move for the market and just for confidence. I think it would be huge. Sam, you were trying to get up earlier. I don't know if you fixed your mic, but I would love your thoughts. How do I sound now? You sound like a pro, like you're in a studio. Okay, great. Well, I guess I just want to shift

the conversation a little bit back to what we were mentioning before. William brought up expectations of the ETF, but I think a lot of the factors that have been driving the price has been expectations of rate cuts. I mean, you've had the dollar have one of its worst months in a long time. It's just been dropping because of these rate expectations that the Fed has done. They're going to cut rates. I think the market is expecting 100% probability of two rate cuts next year. And so when you have those dynamics, you're going to have really rallies in all assets. The 60-40 portfolio, it's ninth best month in November since 1976. You've had gold and Bitcoin rallying as the expectation is that

rates are going to fall. And so you have these external factors driving Bitcoin's price. But also Bitcoin has these unique internal factors like the ETF that we mentioned, like the change in FASB rules and the halving event. And I think you have these dynamics where demand could substantially increase because of the spot Bitcoin ETF and some of these macro factors.

At the same time, you have supply where 70% of the supply hasn't moved in a year on Bitcoin and you have the halving coming up. So there really is just like not that much available bitcoin and you have these other factors that might increase demand at the same time so it really comes down to these supply dynamics and it's looking pretty positive headed into 2024 now rand brought up the fact that there could be a 20 30 retracement well that makes sense because if the Fed has to cut rates, something bad's got to happen before that. And so you could see a scenario where all asset prices fall, when the unemployment rate rises, maybe corporate bankruptcies rise as they struggle

with this higher interest rate environment. And in that scenario, the Fed will eventually cut rates. And I think then you'll see a strong rally, maybe right around the halving. So you have this dynamic where the Fed's easing and Bitcoin is hardening at the same time, similar to the 2020 halving. So that's kind of my summary. I just wanted to bring up the dollar falling and the rate expectations, because I think that's a big factor of why the price is moving right now, you know, crossing 40k. Seems like only nine or 10 months ago that people were pricing in markets were pricing in three rate cuts in 2023 just to show how uh effective pretty you're absolutely correct i'm just saying it's laughable to look at the uh predictive markets they've been so wrong

here for for so long but it's all all that matters to your point is what people expect it doesn't matter what happens because by the time it happens they'll have made their moves so uh zach and matt yes i just want to jump in and say i think that the important cases in the crypto space of the the core cases the coinbase case the binance case and now the kraken case and who knows maybe soon to be followed by gemini those could cut in the other direction so historically you know before a bull run we've often seen you know a pretty big dip right like we've often seen, you know, a pretty big dip, right, like the 2020 dip, I think there was a similar thing in the last two previous bull cycles. And a catalyst for that this time, I think could be an adverse ruling in one of

these cases. I think I strongly disagree with john that the major questions doctrine is going to be helpful. I think the ruling about secondary market sales, that logic is implied by how the Howey test has been interpreted for 80 years now. And the ripple case is really an anomaly in terms of the way that that was treated. And I don't think that's going to stand up on appeal. I think if you have a Coinbase or a Binance losing in court, right, even if that's not existential to all of crypto, even if we're going to be able to innovate around that from a legal perspective, I think that could create a ton of fear in the market and you could see a significant dip. Zach, won't that be years away, though? I think, you know, a year.

I doubt Gary Gensler is even the SEC chairman by the time we get even remote clarity on these cases, right? Well, I don't know. It depends how quickly they move. I think this would be a summary judgment decision we'd get. And it depends how aggressive these judges want to be. But in each of these cases, they're talking about like 11 to 16 different coins. Basically, the SEC only has to win on one of them to show that these exchanges are acting as an unregistered securities exchange. And I think the chances that aord is not going to find that any of these tokens are being offered and sold as investment contracts is pretty low.

Sure. Matt? Yeah, I think I agree with that. I think that's one of the risks I've been thinking about. Yeah, I've been thinking about that comment that was made earlier, like, are we all drunk? In terms of what could derail this rally? Because many of the things driving this rally are just factually true and are going to play out over the coming months. There's a high probability we'll see an ETF. There's the Bitcoin halving. There's EIP-4844. I consider the reopening of Asian markets to be almost a sort of fait accompli in the market. And there are only sort of three things I could see that

would cap the rally that would indicate that we have been drunk. One is some sort of legal setback. And I think concerns around security status is still a really undecided item. So I agree with the last speaker that that's a worry. Another we talked about here as well, would be changing expectations for interest rates. I do think the fact that gold is at an all-time high uh and people are moving into a risk-on rally has a big piece of it and then the other limiting factor on this rally is just you know how many more people come to the party that's probably the the biggest factor is when is it the case that all of the financial advisors and mainstream investors have finally come back into crypto this was the first day in a long time i got the calls today

matt i got the calls today i was about to say this is just the beginning of that like i think the people that are in crypto the people that have been in crypto there's very new very little new money in crypto very very very little new money encrypted like i think that that phrase hasn't started yet i agree completely with that and i do think today is sort of an opening salvo i was going to say this is the first day i opened up bloomberg and the the banner headline in 100 was crypto related uh and i think that is the question is when we reach that apathy because it looks a little bit like crypto money is tapped out, right? Exchange volumes have been falling for a week or so.

So we need these new people to come to the party to keep it going. And the question is, how fast do they arrive? And when are they all in? I think that's probably the most important question right now. I mean, look, I've been around for three cycles. This is my fourth. And I can tell you that this feels like I actually, I was messing around on my show today and I said, or yesterday and today, I said,

this feels like the moose boosh at the restaurant. It's like they've served you the pre-dish of an eight-course meal. You haven't even started the eight-course meal. You've just got the pre-dish, you know? And that's how it feels. It feels like they've just served us the pre-dish and like the chef's still preparing the food. That's how I feel about where we're at, having been around for just now entering my fourth cycle. Yeah, I tend to agree with that. Ron, David, Ron first. Yeah, I mean, if it helps out from the D.C. side of things,

we had our big policy conference last week in D.C. So we had a Treasury, conference last week in DC. So we had a treasury SEC and Congress speak. So at least on the Intel side of like kind of what we're expecting for 2024 from everyone we talked to, it seems like we're in, it's going to be really, really tough to get market structure legislation. So anything regarding the SEC and CFTC,

anything on token listing and such, it looks like it's going to be pretty hard to get that done in 2024 with the election and everything coming up. There was a push last week to try to get some elements of it in the defense bill that Congress is moving right now. That failed, but that was predicted. It's hard to get stuff like that into any defense bill. But stablecoins is looking a lot more promising. And there was both Democrats and Republicans and the Treasury saying stable coins seems like it's primed, ready to go almost. So at least if you're looking for anything from Congress, I look towards that. But also at the

same time, we saw Treasury ask for additional sanction authority and illicit finance authorities from Congress congress and that could potentially slow things down but also i like to highlight too uh treasury also asked for stablecoin uh legislation so there's a chance we could see maybe um you know you know one element of aml stuff and money laundering anti-money laundering legislation attached to stablecoins in the future but i keep an eye on on Congress when it comes to stable coins for 2024. Less SEC. Would a stable coin build be good or bad?

Like, I think it could very much be a double-edged sword. No, it could be both. It seemed like a lot of folks were okay with the additional sanctions from Treasury, but when it comes to more of the increasing powers for illicit finance detection and such, expanding the Bank Secrecy Act to apply to crypto. That got a lot of pushback from all facets of folks in our membership who were at the conference, were in exchanges to defy the wallets, what have you. And of course, folks like

Elizabeth Warren, but even more national security focus on both sides of the aisle could really lean into that. So I just know, I just hope folks, Treasury asked for stablecoin legislation in 2021, and we're nearing 2024, and we still don't have it on the books yet. So this could take some more time, but it could also be the issue that kind of either blows up the deal and nothing happens in 2024. We could get some partial elements of it, or we could get both. But it's hard to see the Republicans, especially fully signing off on Treasury's recommendations for increasing the Bank Secrecy Act to apply. Also, Ron, I mean, it's important to note, like, even if it passes

Congress, I would say the odds of something getting through the Senate and the President are pretty unlikely right now. I would say that the odds of anything passing with this broken government are pretty low at the moment. So I think it's just encouraging that they're having the conversation. Also, you talked about your conference last week for the Blockchain Association, obviously. I mean, that's when Wally Andiemo, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, showed up and just started dropping bombs on the crypto industry, right? National security threat, child trafficking, drug trafficking. I mean, he was not withholding any words to effectively a conference advocating for crypto. Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, it's great, though, that we had him there. And

candidly, like, it was pretty awesome that he decided to use our venue to announce that. But look, at the same time, you know, especially.C., they really do focus on the bad actors and using that to justify pushing legislation. And so that's why it's good for the industry sometimes to call out bad actors like when Binance is doing pretty shady things. It's good to call that out because that actually encourages especially more of a national security argument. And we've seen more allies push this tactic recently. So take Senator Lummis and Representative Hill. They pushed a letter to them on Binance as well as Tether. And so the national security arguments do help bolster sometimes legislation to move forward.

But we need Democrats as well to join that fight. And obviously, there seems to's a lot more skeptics on that side. So we'll see. Do you think that Binance was really doing bad things or do you think that they were just, I mean, do you think that Binance were maliciously helping terrorists and money laundering or do you think that they maybe just didn't pay as much attention as they should have?

Willful blindness. Actually, I think that's a good summary right there, willful blindness. At least here in D.C., that's the perception from both sides, the aisle and from the admin. We've been hearing this for quite some time. I've been telling folks for the past year and a half, be careful of Binance. They don't have a great rep in D.C. Again, I'd say Tether is the next on the list in terms of not favorable views in D.C. Mostly focused on audits and reserves back about a year and a year and a half ago. Obviously,

it's changing more now to the national security angle with some of those reports on Hamas and what have you. But yeah, I think that's kind of, at least least for right now it's more the purview here the last thing i also will say is there was a major focus on north korea um you know we've heard a lot about more of the hamas and russian narratives and you know we've been able to push back successfully on that but the national security folks especially those uh at the doj fbi kept reiterating it uh north korea and they've been hearing these through classified briefings. We don't know the full extent of what they're being told, but if North Korea hypothetically

were to do something in the next year, that could drastically alter how DCE is going to engage on crypto. Again, we just don't know what they're being told in these intel briefings, but that came up several times. So hold on, when they get these intel briefings.

You're breaking up. Yeah, I was saying, I don't know if you can hear, but I think like these briefings that they get, do you think the information of the briefings is as reliable as the information that we get from the Senate and from Congress? Or do you think that these classified briefings are much more reliable? It's hard to tell that they do these things in the SCIF. So for those in the national security realm, they do these in the Capitol. They are in a very closed-door setting. So I don't even know who he's presenting,

but usually it is folks within the government of the Pentagon. There is a push recently, actually, from both Republicans and Democrats in the House to try to declassify those briefings, just so that we can get a better picture of what they're being told. Again, we know about the Harmony Bridge hack, the Ronin Bridge hack um and more of a cyber security issues but there were some other folks both in congress and the regulators hinting that there's other stuff there you know what you know what worries me is that it's almost inevitable that they're going to be able to go for the u.s dollar and tether there is no doubt in my mind that tether is used for illicit activities. I'm not saying as a percentage,

whether it's more or less than cash, but it's, you know, there's no doubt in my mind that you will be able to link Tether to some kind of illicit terrorist activity or something like that. And so it's like, I almost don't see how they don't go for Tether. We'll see what happens.

Again, I really haven't seen too heavy of a push on the Tether pushback as much as in the Binance one. And again, that was almost near unanimous. Folks on both sides of the aisle, crypto champions and crypto skeptics were not fans of Binance. Again, a little less measured more when it comes to Tether, but still largely viewed as not a good actor, or at least not as favorable currently here in DC. But yeah, again, I just keep reiterating for 2024, just keep an eye on the North Korea narrative, because it seems that the Hamas one's really starting to die down after there was that good, successful pushback

on the Wall Street Journal story a couple of weeks ago. But it's still top of mind for a lot of folks in the national security space. Well, we just had the Bitcoin mix of Sinbad that they were connecting to North Korean side. You can see the narrative shifting. Yeah, we're going to move towards wrapping up here. But David, I'd love to give your final thoughts here.

Yeah. So look, I think this space is phenomenal because it always gives a sobering view, up market, down market. And I think that that's why this audience, frankly, should continue to come here and participate. But I will say on the bullish side of things, look, the cryptocurrency generally ripped over the weekend. And you see now today, you know, NASDAQ is sucking wind. It's down over a point and a half. The rest of the market is red. And even with gold's gains, you know,

it touched its high. It's retraced around 5% from where it hit its high. To Rand's point earlier about being drunk in terms of the sector, I think one great metamorphosis that's going on is the fact that the sector is really becoming an asset class of its own in the sense of how it reacts on a correlated basis to markets. And I think for some investors, that alone is going to go ahead and justify a need to be invested in this asset class. They will get eventually to the substantive understanding of what makes this asset class different than other asset classes. But the narrative around the fact that on the one hand, you know, Bitcoin on its own can be a store of value, digital gold,

a safe haven asset, but on the other hand, also be, you know, a technology driven type of investment with, you know, potentially, you know, very high beta relative to the equity markets, I think is going ahead and carving out a space for this asset class that is going to be very important over the very long term. It's going to go ahead and bring in tons of capital for those attributes alone because of its lack of correlation or distinguishing attributes, these are the other markets. And I think we're seeing that today. And I think people should take comfort in that, frankly, and value in that, that we are able to see a big rip on crypto while the rest of the market is frankly not doing well. And, you know, gold trading may be sideways at this point. I

think it's really a great attribute that doesn't get focused on all that much because it's not substantive, but it is very important. I think that's a great way to conclude. Really well spoken, David. And thank you everyone, all our guests for joining. Going to be interesting over the next couple of weeks to see how the market reacts to hitting these key levels and what's going to happen obviously with ETF news coming and Coinbase and such. I think we covered a lot of ground. We will be back, of course, tomorrow morning at 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Ran, anything else? Are we good? I'm going to take that as we're good. All right. Thanks, everybody. See you tomorrow. Bye.