The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Is Poised For A Huge Bull Market | 95% Chance Of Bitcoin ETF Approval

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Spot Bitcoin ETF approval chances have increased to 75% this year and 95% by the end of 2024. The authors of this probability, Bloomberg's ETF analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balchunas, are joining me. The show will be followed by the Charting Man Dan with his technical analysis.  Eric Balchunas: https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas James Seyffart: https://twitter.com/JSeyff Charting Man Dan: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnqZ2hx679DqRi6khRUNw2g ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►►MELD MELD will bring to bear the full power of decentralized financial instruments to the masses. Banks are at the heart of the economy, MELD will become a new set of banking tools that are by the people and for the people. 👉 https://bit.ly/meld-early-access  ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #trading  Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:30 Bitcoin ETF 4:50 BlackRock 7:00 Grayscale win over SEC 12:00 The 5% 15:40 “We just hate crypto” 18:30 ETFs protect investors 25:00 Inverse Jim Cramer ETF 31:30 Bitcoin update 37:00 Bears: nothing to worry about 40:00 Gold 43:00 Silver 43:30 Metals 47:30 Cron 48:00 Wrap up The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Before Grayscale annihilated the SEC in court, Bloomberg analysts were pricing the chances of a Bitcoin spot ETF approval by the end of 2023 at 65%. That has now risen to 75% based on Grayscale defeating the SEC. And that's just for 2023. If we start talking about 2024, those same analysts are pricing the odds of a Bitcoin spot ETF approval at 95%. I'm curious what that 5% would be to make it not happen. But as usual, when we have people making amazing predictions, we just bring them on the show so they can tell you about it instead of me. I've got Eric Valchunas and James Safer, both from Bloomberg, both the leading ETF experts. I will say on this planet, they can debate it. You guys can debate it. But to me, they're the best in the entire game. The guys I go to when we want to talk about

ETFs. And of course, I've got Dan from Chart Guys on the back half to talk about what it actually means for markets and to look at some charts. This is going to be an amazing show, guys. Let's go. What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Wall Street. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit the like button right down below. Now, I know we are all very tired of talking about things in the United States that have three letters like, I don't know, Fed, SEC, the ones we don't like. But there's one thing that we can't seem to get enough of, and that is ETF. And we've seen this through many cycles, but obviously, rarely we can say this time is different. It's funny, the Winklevi twins, Cameron and Tyler, they first applied for a Bitcoin spot ETF 10 years ago, literally 10 years ago. That was before I was

in crypto, which was in 2016. In 2014, they first applied for it. And it has been a narrative of every single cycle. But that has changed a lot, especially with BlackRock entering the fray and seeing in the last cycle, the approval of a BlackRock, not BlackRock, of a Bitcoin futures ETF. I'm going to go ahead and bring on Eric and James right now. We're going to talk about what this means and why this time is in fact different. The ETF all starts here. Did you guys ever think you could become rock stars by being experts in ETFs? Because that's what's happened on Twitter. I don't know if you guys are aware of that. Because you're like the hottest ticket in town now is Eric and James.

Yeah. Well, first of all, when I came into contact with the ETF, it was about 2006, and I had covered mutual funds. And I just thought this thing was ETF. It was about 2006. And I had covered mutual funds. And I just thought this thing was amazing. It was like five evolutionary steps beyond the mutual fund. So I kind of latched my whole career onto it. I said, you know, this is back when ETFs had about, you know, 500 billion. Today, they have 7.3 trillion. And I just felt it was a wave that was going to break. I'm sure it's something like the way people who got into crypto early felt you just felt like this is going to be big um so i've enjoyed it and i feel like when it comes to crypto and the way we're handicapping races it started in 2021 when we handicapped the bitcoin futures etf race and we got it right. I think the metaphor I use is,

we're kind of like Nate Silver in 2012, when he was the, I guess the most optimistic that Obama was gonna be reelected because I guess Democrat voters were nervous that Romney was gonna win. And he was like, no, Obama's got a pretty good chance. I feel like we're kind of in the same group. We're speaking to an audience

that's really hoping this happens. We think that should have happened a long time ago. But we're not, we're putting our brain and our calculus into that number. That's why we still have a 25% chance that it won't happen this year. We just want to be right. I mean, that's our main goal. But certainly, I think that we're happy to be sort of an interpreter to the crypto community as to what ETFs are, why they're important, who uses them, and why this matters a lot. Yeah, I mean, I made a joke even on Twitter today. I said, I'm not a macroeconomist, but I play one on Twitter. And I feel like you are talking to a bunch of kindergartners and trying to explain to them complex topics. And now everybody,

it must be very frustrating for you. We're all ETF experts now, right, James? I mean, literally everybody knows everything about, well, we're all experts in everything, right? Spy balloons and viruses and all of it. Yeah, I get a lot of comments on my, some of the things I'm tweeting. And I'm just like, I literally, I answered this repeatedly over the last few days. And people are saying that it's wrong and um and my favorite example was when blackrock filed eric and i were talking about the fact that blackrock filed a spot bitcoin etf and then all of a sudden we had a bunch of crypto people saying this isn't this isn't an etf this is a trust um so yeah we try like eric said we're just trying to be right. And then there's all these, I guess, the crypto community seems splintered into a couple factions.

There's definitely a faction that thinks BlackRock is just launching the ETF as an exit move. And BlackRock is purposely putting news out to hype the price. And so people are trying to actually almost like play BlackRock as the Fed and what they're doing and how to trade around that. And sometimes there's just nothing there. I think BlackRock generally just wants to have a successful product, but you get a lot of interesting stuff in the comments for sure. It's a, I got to say, like, it's probably one of the most entertaining areas of FinTwit by far. A lot of characters, a lot of energy. You know, we travel amongst ETF issuers and financial advisors, and they're just a little more conservative, generally speaking.

I think crypto, you know, it just, I don't know, it's got like a little bit of a, I don't know, punk rock vibe. It's very excitable. I think, you know, there's a lot of people who are, you know, I guess just really optimistic. You know, there's a little bit of like us versus them. And I do find that one of the interesting things that we find is that there is this tension between, hey, this ETF might get approved. It's BlackRock. Wow. All this potential money could come in. My price will go up. But then there's this other side that's like, wait a second. We want to let Larry Fink involved in our little punk rock scene over here. Isn't that exactly who we were fighting? Inviting the evil empire into the rebellion.

Yeah. It's interesting. That tension fascinates me. Yeah, that tension is definitely there. But now we got to obviously pivot and talk about what this grayscale decision actually means. You guys have been out in front of this for a very long time, right? So, James, you and I have talked about this particularly on the show. You thought it was very, very, very likely that grayscale was going to win. That obviously happened. You handicapped that to some degree.

So now, as I said, we've gone from effectively 65% to 75%. I see people in the comments going, clickbait title. No, these are literally the numbers. These are the predictions, right? And 95%, if it doesn't happen this year, that it will end up in 2024. So let's talk about what Grayscale meant. I want to also hear if the way that Grayscale won mattered because it was such an aggressive rejection of the SEC, I think, in this case, the language and the way arbitrary and capricious, obviously, and how we get to that 95% number now. Yeah, so I mean, 100% the language they use.

I mean, Eric and I have talked to a bunch of people in this race, if you will, in the spot Bitcoin ETF race, and pretty much everyone had the same kind of thing. We thought Grayscale was going to win, but we didn't think it would be like this. So the language was very strong, complete, utter takedown of the SEC's arguments of the last few years. The last 10 years, you mentioned Winklevoss filed 10 years ago. There's been, there's like a list of 30 different things. Like Dahlia Blass famously in 2018, I think, or 2017 issued this whole thing the language all it comes back to is the sec can't say there's fraud and manipulation on the spot market but not the futures market and allow bitcoin futures ets but not allow spot bitcoin ets basically they need to trade like situations alike and like you said we expected grayscale to win we we were actually early i was

arguing with people on twitter everyone was telling me this is a frivolous lawsuit by the grace by grayscale and they're not going to win. And then the oral arguments happened and we immediately that day went to a 70% chance that Grayscale was going to win. So we've gone from Grayscale's flying this no way they're going to win frivolous lawsuit to them utterly dominating the SEC in court, right? Like we saw the language in the oral arguments was pretty strong, but the judges were just asking questions and I thought they could win 3-0 and this was a unanimous 3-0 decision. So the unanimity- A 3-0 decision from three judges, from three different presidents, from three different basically political ideologies. I mean, this was just an absolute back alley beating.

This is an underrated point, in my opinion. I think the judge who wrote the rejection or the ruling was a Trump appointee. So you're like, okay, well, they're clearly against the Dems, who Gensler is one, and they don't like maybe a lot of regulation. But the other two were from Democratic presidents. So the fact is- Obama and Carter. Yeah. Carter.

70s. I know. 1970s. I was born at the beginning of the Carter administration. I'm almost 50. I know. My first memories are of Ronald Reagan. I don't barely remember Jimmy Carter. But okay, so you've got two Democratic judges that are like, yeah, okay, Raul, you can actually write this. And the fact that they all just sort of supported her, I think matters because again, we go over the legal aspects of this all the time and that's important, but there's also the political aspects. Does Gensler have the support of his party? Does the party want this? And the more you find Democrats moving, whether it's in the court or

in the Congress and again, in the public relations arena, the more I think, you know, there's less cover for him to set up and move the goalposts and create some new reason they can't launch them. And so this is, to me, half legal, half, you know, PR politics. And so I think that's that 3.0 is important because of that political aspect. And again, the language was, was really intense. And then the, the amount of coverage was wide and deep. You had every, every crypto, obviously, but people at Capitol Hill probably aren't devouring crypto trade publications, but they do read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. I think it's on the cover of, of parts of the journal. I mean, this is really, really, really big. Yeah, this is big. It's the kind of stuff where

the senator might forward the email and be like, how did this happen? What's going on here? And then brains change, thoughts start to change, hearts change, and all of a sudden, Gensler doesn't have the cover that he did. And so this to me is really fascinating. And that is why we upped it 10 more percentage points. Again, we took a day to do it. We sort of talked to a couple of people, a couple of lawyers, issuers amongst ourselves. And we thought that those two reasons were enough to go up 10 percentage points. Let me ask you a question. So we got to 95% in 2024. I think the reasons are very, very clear. I do not think that's hyperbolic, but that leaves 5%. Right. And so we've obviously seen people say the SEC can now go back and remove the futures products entirely. Right. But there's a non-zero chance of that happening if they want to go, I think, napalm scorched earth, which I think is the less likely scenario but possible but what's that five percent i mean is the five percent that biden gets re-elected gensler gets reappointed keeps his job and uh status quo i mean how do we you know five percent is a pretty low or the opposite where

let's say the republican wins let's say they just freeze everything because the election's coming up and they and they let's say gensler moves the goalposts again and despite everything through what march they can punt through march effectively now january january is the first final deadline but let's say they say they have a whole hang up with custody which is a new thing they could introduce and they they denied them all in january march and then the issuers try to solve the custody. And then it's July. And then it's like, well, hey, the election's coming up. And let's say the Republican wins. They got to appoint a new commissioner that could take you into 2025. 100% in 2025 or 2026. Yeah, pretty much 99. Yeah, you have to understand James and I have lived through 11 years now of the SEC just being total sticks in the mud on this. And so that is just in our

blood and brains in terms of how we view this. And so you just can't ever doubt their stubbornness on this issue. So that's why we're leaving a little wiggle room for it not happening by the end of next year too. Part of the other reason that we also, I was confident to go above 90% was, it hasn't really gotten a lot of coverage, but this hashdex filing, the way that they're going to go about, so with the custody, like Eric brought up, they could, they basically, if they want to start denying these things, they, like you said, they need the remote futures or they need to deny them on things that do not affect the futures market, the futures, Bitcoin futures, right? So because we have Bitcoin futures, right? So because

we have Bitcoin futures ETFs, they can't do something that affects both of them. Custody is one of them. Settlement is another, the actual settlement of the underlying Bitcoin. I don't know how detailed you've gotten to SAB 121, but basically banks can't hold cryptos and banks are the intermediaries that kind of settle on this creation redemption process of ETFs. So at some point you have to get the Bitcoin into the ETF and back and forth when you're creating or redeeming shares. And this hashtags application basically sets it up so that it happens on a regulated exchange CME and you're just trading Bitcoin futures for underlying spot, which is not the most

efficient way to get spot exposure, right? Let's be completely clear. But it does eliminate a lot of the fraud and manipulation arguments, right? Exactly. And the settlement issues they could potentially have, theoretically, it could come back to custody, like Eric said, but that also alleviates a ton of issues. So even if the SEC wants to come back, deny ARC, deny Grayscale, do all these things, it's going to be hard to deny hashtags. The nerd in me would love to read an SEC disapproval letter for that hashtags application. And the other part of it is we could have to decrease our odds slightly in the 75% this year in the next couple weeks, depending on what the SEC says about Grayscale.

If they say Grayscale has to enter the 19B4 process again, and they have to go through this whole 240-day process, then all of a sudden, like, the odds of it happening before the end of the year are going to have to decrease. But that's another reason why we're so different on 2024 versus 2023. Yeah. I mean, time-based predictions are really complex. Everybody here who's ever been in crypto or watched markets obviously knows that. We're already seeing, literally, I just got sent this. We're already seeing articles. SEC can prepare alternative arguments to reject spot ETFs. This is from Barenberg in Germany, right? So this is the other, it's kind of to your point. The other way they can approach this is just, they come up with something completely different,

like custody or settlement and just basically say, yeah, we were wrong to reject it that way, but we're right to reject it this way. I just think with BlackRock in the mix that they're playing with fire. If BlackRock was in the mix, and Fidelity, I think they're both kind of, I would call them like the adults in the room type asset managers. Every room. Yeah. They are the establishment. Yeah. And a lot of people who work there, work in Congress, it's like there's a revolving door between, not Congress, but just in the sec and the treasury uh there's somewhat of a revolving door especially with blackrock um you know i just have to think like larry fink is probably behind sort of arguing his

case and that's a big deal again the blackrock factor has always been a big variable here um but to that to that article's point um it's possible. Yeah. I mean, I just think it would look desperate. And if they already lost a legal case in an embarrassing fashion, it just makes them look like, what's the word? Like petulant almost. Like we just hate crypto or we just hate this. Tantruming children. That's what it doesn't look like yeah and i look i get it they're trying to protect investors but again the problem with the protect investors uh thing with them is that they've already approved bitcoin futures etfs which are arguably worse because they have to roll so the biddo is trailing bitcoin by eight percent this year and they

approved a 2x bitcoin futures etf So we have a traffic light system. And in our traffic light system, BidX and Biddo are red light ETFs. Whereas a Bitcoin spot ETF would be green light. So here's your tweet. Yeah. And sorry, just to prove the appetite for this. As you said, Biddo traded over 800 million worth of shares yesterday. You posted this yesterday.

So that's for the 29th, the day that the Grayscale announcement came out. The most since its billion dollar first day, right? I mean, there was an appetite for this that first day. And now obviously even just this Grayscale news means there's a huge appetite, huge volume into Bitcoin ETFs, right? So right now it will be the futures one because that's the only one that's available. And you made the best point people might remember, but because there was so much interest in Biddo from day one, they couldn't even buy the immediate 30-day contracts. They had to keep going further out on the curve, making it riskier and tracking spot even less.

So it's just an inferior product. It is. And if the SEC had spent the energy they did with these denials and converted their stubbornness into going after GBTC, which is a broken product, maybe going after microstrategy and saying you can't make yourself a sort of surrogate Bitcoin ETF by holding all this Bitcoin and saying that futures ETFs do not make, it's like they let all these inferior products out that protect investors less when they're not letting the spot out, which to me is a spot Bitcoin ETF. ETFs are very safe.

They're good. It allows for arbitrage. They're listed in eight other countries and they work fine. They work fine through FTX scandal. They protect investors. You just made the most important point. I'm not trying to interrupt, but the SEC's literal job is to consumer protection, and nothing would protect

investors better than a BlackRock ETF overseen by BlackRock, custodied by Coinbase. This is why James and I sometimes use the word hostage. It seems like they're using the ETF hostage to do things to crypto they want to do. But that's not really good regulation, in my opinion. That's not protecting investors. That's just story that the court side with Uniswap over the class action suit. Did you guys see this yesterday? Yeah, I did. token issuers. The claim here was that because Uniswap was allowing scam rug pulls to be on Uniswap, that Uniswap was liable, basically, are basically unknown and unknowable, leaving plaintiffs with an identifiable injury, but no identifiable defendant. Now, this doesn't necessarily play to an ETF. I'm not going to make that claim, but it plays to the fact that the SEC and the court, more importantly, that the court is clearly defending the crypto industry here

against a lot of nonsense, including the SEC. You just have to imagine that the SEC's appetite to fight these things. I think that's almost a bigger story actually than Grayscale for crypto, not for the ETF. But the court is basically undefeated in protecting crypto right now. Yeah. I mean, so I would say two things. One, when I saw that on Twitter yesterday, I immediately reached out to our litigation analyst, Elliot Stein, who's the guy that I talked about when we were trying to decide what to do with this Grayscale case. And he said he kind of poured cold water on a lot of these takes. He said there are true, like obviously the court is defending it. But he said, basically, the quote in there is in the analysis that follows,

the court accepts the plaintiff's assertion that the tokens are bona fide securities, but makes no actual findings on this basis. It just made sense for them to throw this out in many ways. So I wouldn't completely do it. And it's completely different arguments. That is the judge that's overseeing the Coinbase lawsuit with the SEC. But he said he's not reading much into it as a litigation analyst, but it is obviously something where the courts are definitely not allowing any of this complete overreach by regulators and other plaintiffs. So that's the real takeaway. But some of the other takeaways on crypto Twitter that I've seen were a little bit strong and he was, yeah, he basically poured the water on that. part of the suit was that Uniswap was offering unregistered securities, right? So

the very fact that it's being thrown out, I think a lot of people are seeing is just a little more fuel for the Coinbase fire against the SEC. Agreed. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I thought, Eric, you had a comment there. A lot of people are having major takes though now. I mean, we have presidential candidates jumping on this, right? We've got Vivek saying Grayscale wins clear path for Bitcoin innovation in America, to be honest. Listen, I love seeing this, but it seems hyperbolic. Go ahead, Eric. We get a lot of back alley, back channel people talking to us who are like, hey, you can't say I said this, but here's what I heard, right? We heard from one person. I can't say who, obviously, and I can't say if it's true, but it feels true, which is that one of the other reasons Larry Fink was interested in doing this is that he felt the U.S. was losing on the global stage in terms of crypto. And he's a very, you know, some of these CEOs are also American leaders.

Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink, they care about this country, right? They want to win. Yes. So, yes, it would help a little revenue for BlackRock. I get it. But the theory was that this was annoying Larry Fink, that the rest of the world was able to go ahead with stuff and we were left behind. And I'm not saying that's true, but it feels true to me gut-wise. But again, I'm just throwing it out there. Speaking of gut, if people remember when the

BlackRock ETF filing happened, it was right after the SEC went after both Binance and Coinbase back-to-back days on a Monday and a Tuesday. So if they were holding that ace in their pocket at some point, and Larry thinking was particularly feeling that way, he effectively erased the downside of all of that just by his simple announcement. So that carries a lot of water. If you look at the timing. Yeah.

I actually didn't notice that it came right after. Now they had a week or something. They were probably preparing it before, but it is an interesting timing-wise. Maybe it's just coincidental, but it's interesting. The other side, the Binance thing that you bring up, that's one thing I am waiting to see. There's that sealed indictment or sealed filing from the SEC on that Binance case. There's a lot of chatter that there's going to be a DOJ case against Binance. So that kind of goes into our 5% in 2024 as well, depending on how bad that

actually is. But as Eric has said before, and we've pointed out, it kind of seems like the SEC may be pushing the industry towards people like Coinbase and away from people or firms like Binance, like basically saying these are the okay ones and kind of trying to pour a lot of water on. Yeah. I mean, for the most part, that's the way it makes sense why they would do that. I have nothing against Binance. I have no feeling about what they've done. I think probably most of it was in the past, but we don't need new regulation. We don't need aggressive regulation to handle things if they are that are outright fraud or illegal. That's sort of the laughable thing about all of this. Everything

Sam Bankman Freight did had nothing to do with crypto. It was just illegal. It's fraud. It didn't require new regulation. It didn't require a regulator. They should have stopped that before it happened. But it does feel like they are going to choose winners. But I think that's fine if those winners are compliant and are fully functioning companies in the United States. That's why going after Coinbase just seems so stupid to me. Guys, I know you got to go, right? We're up against your time. Go ahead, James, though.

Yeah, I'll close out and say my overall view here, right, is even if you believe Bitcoin is nothing but a bunch of toxic waste, as Eric kind of hinted at, like, it makes no sense to allow these Bitcoin futures products, allow micro strategy and all these other ways to get access to Bitcoin and just not allow the safest, most secure way to get access to Bitcoin. Like, even if it's going to go to zero, even if it's completely worthless, people are trying to get access to this asset class, trying to get access to this asset. And I can't fathom the decision to allow futures products and these other products and not just allow the holy grail and leverage futures products, not allow the holy grail of spot. You're not protecting investors, right? That's what it comes down to at the end of the day.

Before I let you go, I have one more question. Name three ETFs that are undeniably stupider than a Bitcoin spot ETF. What are the dumbest ETFs that are being traded? Well, I mean, I mean, easily you go, I have to go bid X first, first and foremost, like the 2X leverage Bitcoin futures ETF. I don't know if I'd say it's stupider, but it's certainly way more risky. I don't even mean crypto. I mean, I'm talking about like reverse inverse leverage marijuana ETFs that bet on crack rock and, you know, and I don't even mean in crypto. I mean, I'm talking about like reverse, inverse leverage, marijuana ETFs that bet on crack rock and, you know, I don't know. I mean, if you look, there's a 3X, there's like levered junior gold miners ETFs out there.

So junior gold miners are these highly volatile stocks dependent on the value of gold, right? So if it goes above a certain amount, they're almost all flexible costs. So gold drives their prices. So when you have 3X things that are levered to the price of gold, and then you multiply those by 2X or 3X into an ETF, those things, I mean, it makes sense. It's a trader's dream, right? But it's not a way of protecting investors. That's way more risky in our eyes. And my point is a lot of things have been approved that are a lot riskier, I would say, than a Bitcoin spot ETF.

Did we ever get the inverse Kramer, by the way? Yeah, we did. That actually just closed. Well, no. I'm just saying, there's an inverse Jim Kramer ETF, which is literally gambling

on a guy's gambling. You can't get a Bitcoin spot ETF. Yeah. Two years ago, I went to Exchange, which is a big ETF conference, and I made a shirt for myself and Nature AC. It just had the phrase on it, and still no spot Bitcoin ETF, because we would tweet about a new filing or actual launch, like 3x energy producers, which would

have a volatility of like, you know, two, three times Bitcoin. And we would, and then we'd say, and still no spot Bitcoin ETFs. That became like a phrase for us for a while. And it's true. You know, that said, I have nothing against the trading tool stuff. I'm actually think that the rated R stuff is okay, as long as you know what you're doing. But the whataboutism is fair. I mean, well, how could you approve this and not that? But to me, the whataboutism is more, I think it hits harder when you look at the bitcoin futures approved gbtc allowing to exist that's literally a broken product that doesn't track the price um and they did they didn't didn't do anything about it so and that was able to sort of advertise itself a bit like an etf it had four tickers

it was on a lot of people could get it pretty easily. But I think they found out the hard way that the difference between an ETF and something like this, which is essentially like a closed-end fund. So that to me is the better whatabouts system, but certainly the leveraged stuff, you could be like, come on.

Retail, your average retail person who bought GBTC had zero understanding of the mechanics underlying GBTC and probably didn't even know it was at a premium or a discount at any given time. You could look at my replies when I was talking about how the fact that GBTC could go into a discount in like 2018, talking about like the same issues could happen. And I have never been vilified as much on Twitter as I was when I was saying that FUD, this is going to 300% premium. People had no idea how this thing worked. They had no understanding whatsoever.

Yeah. And now we have Three Arrows Capital and BlockFi as examples of exactly why you were right. Guys, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time. I'm sure you're going to keep going on the roadshow until this thing gets approved, and I'm here for it. Thank you very much, and welcome back. Thank you. All right, guys. Awesome. Yeah. 95%. I love it. The first thing that I say anytime we do a title is, you're clickbaiting. I'm not watching. I'm out of here, man. And then like you,

like 10 minutes later, the same person still commenting means they're still watching. Yes. If you're wondering, it means that they are in fact still watching. I'm going to bring on Dan in a second. I just want to cook through like two minutes of news before we do that. Obviously, a few things I want to highlight. We were just talking about Vivek Ramaswamy. He took this obviously not only to say, as you saw in that article, that Grayscale wouldn't clear his path for Bitcoin innovation in America. He went a little bit further and said that basically it means he can rescind all federal regulations that fail the Supreme Court's tests in West Virginia versus EPA, which quite literally means most federal regulations. So apparently because Grayscale beat the SEC, Vivek Ramaswamy, elected president, is going to get rid of all regulation.

Some of these guys might just be using Bitcoin as a talking point in their presidential campaign. I'm just saying, I'm not naming names, but some of them might be. And in case you didn't see this, 120 million in shorts liquidated following the grayscale ruling. We all saw that massive candle to the upside. Good news caused big short squeeze. Nothing new here. And I just want to mention this.

We're going to talk about it, I think, pretty in depth on Crypto Town Hall on Spaces right after this. But Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong reveals his 10 favorite crypto innovations. This is actually really cool. It's all the 10 things that he said he would effectively focus on if he had time and was building other companies. You can see that he made a video and did it right here. And Ryan Selkis from Masari kind of dug into each one of them. I'm just going to read you the 10 and you can dig into it yourself or listen to it on Spaces. Flatcoin, track CPI, on-chain reputation.

I think we all understand that. On-chain advertising, on-chain capital, decentralized labor market, layer two privacy, true peer-to-peer, web three game economies, tokenize everything, and network states, which goes back to biology. I recommend you guys dig in. I want to get Dan on here and start talking about some charts, but I do recommend you guys check out that video and that thread. It's really compelling from one of the greatest minds, obviously, in crypto. And now without further ado, the chart guys. Dan, how are you today, man? I'm great. Thanks for having me back. How are you? I don't know if time just flies, but I feel like I talk to you every day at this point.

It's definitely, it's often. Yeah. I mean, really, I think that I'm just getting old and time has a different meaning than it used to, but we've had a lot happen since last we talked, right? So we obviously, a lot and a little, I guess, nothing major really changes even with all of this. And I want to talk about this Bitcoin move because two days ago, obviously, we saw the Grayscale news break right at the exact same moment, by the way, when that sort of job weakness showed and we saw a move in other markets. This was obviously outstandingly larger. But at that exact same moment, there was sort of a lot of move, a lot of good news coming in. We saw this massive pump and then absolutely no follow through. None.

Yeah. It's a bit concerning just in the sense that whenever we see a pump like this, what I want to see is the first time during consolidation that we hit short-term oversold conditions, I want to see that mark a longer-term higher low. So in this instance, we want to see first five-minute oversold conditions mark an hourly higher low. That tells me there's money on the sideline that is trying to get in and saying, well, I missed the initial move, but the first period of consolidation, that's when I'm going to get in. And we saw a weak bounce attempt, and then we rolled over to the lower lows. And as soon as that happens, we say, okay, this is not the ideal scenario for bulls. It's almost like a little bit of an initial heads up is not ideal. And now we've given back half of that pump,

50% retracement. And so it's just, as you mentioned, it's news, but it's not now news. All it is, is changing the probabilities of something that could happen in the future. And so the market has to price in that change in probability. And your two previous guests, that's pretty much what you're talking about, the change in probability. And so the price reflects that, but the market wants the here and now news, something significant has changed, and that won't happen without the headline of the ETF has been approved. Yeah. I'm just drawing the headline of the ETF has been approved. Yeah, I'm just drawing it sort of as you're talking. I had drawn this blue line. I said, if you're a bull at this point, you effectively don't even want to touch this, I think,

until you at least get this support test because of exactly what you just said. It looks weak. But I had not drawn the fibs and that was literally exactly a 50% retracement. So we do talk about this a lot, guys. When you see a large move in either direction, you do somewhat expect an impulse. At least I do. This is what I learned at that 50% level. You see either a quick retrace, but the problem is we haven't seen the major bounce from there. Usually we see the continuation after that. If it drops massively, you get this huge bounce because of sitting buy orders, all those bids that are getting cleared out, bounce up 50% and then dump. Here, it's just kind of gone sideways after that. It's a little concerning to me. Yeah. And this morning, you can see that big upper wick there. We had a quick spike and then the bears jumped right on it and knocked it back down to the low

of consolidation. So there's definitely a battle going on right now, but the bulls have a lot of proving to do. And we got the weakness in the dollar, as you mentioned, the jolts being aligned with that, the dollar dumped on the jolts. And so that was a little bit of a double whammy with the headline for Bitcoin. But again, the follow through is lacking. And if you go to the weekly timeframe, we have to be cautious of the head and shoulders, there is a weekly head and shoulders that is potentially shaping up. And that's, that's something that in September, we're going to be watching as for whether or not that shapes up. Yeah. I mean, I would love to see your charts on the dollar at this point, because I think

you and I have been kind of talking about it and it was right there and seems to be maybe, maybe putting in that lower high that we were talking about, right? Yeah. The weekly timeframe for the dollar has just started consolidating. But what we have to see now, you look at the daily timeframe and we had this initial pullback on that jolts and all right, well now we're bouncing and we must see a daily downtrend confirm if this weekly consolidation is going to follow through. Technically, we broke the pattern where we had a higher low every single week for six weeks. We did break the low of last week, but at the moment, it's a break with no follow through. So we got to see that daily downtrend confirm. And honestly, one thing that when I approach the markets and I look at crypto and I look at the stock market and commodities, I look around and say, you know, where's the most opportunity and the metals are going to try and steal the show here in terms of taking, you know, the narrative,

just we're talking about gold real quick here. Gold is the potential of a monthly cup and handle gold has a triple top at the all time high. And if we continue to hold, you know, this EMA 12, and this healthy retracement, this is a possible cup and handle. And so, you know, one thing I think of is, well, if gold gets this all-time high break, it's going to get the headlines, it's going to get the attention and the FOMO. And so I'm wondering, would that take away? I know for me, I would focus more on gold than Bitcoin if this were to shape up. So is that going to happen to other people in the markets? That's something to be keeping an eye on as well. But overall for Bitcoin, what we have to see

is just a good old fashioned daily uptrend and just the confidence of higher lows and higher highs. And we had the sideways and now we got a spike. Give me the higher lows and higher highs uptrend to give us some confidence because without that, we're just looking for that weekly lower high that might be a right shoulder. The burden's still on bulls at this point. No, it's funny. You just brought that up on the daily chart, but for some reason, my brain defaulted to that being the weekly chart and the big red down being FTX and the big green up being the January. It really mimics the move that we saw over those couple months at the end of last year. At least- Yeah, right back here.

I don't know. I just didn't even realize you were looking at a daily. I was like, oh, cool. We're looking at the monthly chart, really consolidating it. Well, not at all. Yeah. And that's the thing is we had big follow through there. We had three big candles on the weekly, what you're referring to here. We just got the one big green. So definitely a lot more needed. It's really, I just think about whether I'm in bullish or bearish mindset, I just always put myself in the opposing mindset. So if I'm looking as a bull, I want to know, let's just pretend I have a bearish position. Am I worried right now? And the answer is no. A lot of bears are going to have their stops over the high of that reaction. And if we don't get over that high, there's nothing to worry about longer term as a bear. If we get over that high, then we can, you know, start to shift things a bit, but that's now the line in the sand. Yeah. And I mean, I know you obviously look at the MAs as well. It was kind of curious that we had that break of the daily 200 there, that red line and immediately lost it and now have tested it as resistance and the 200 MA still, I mean, on the weekly still major resistance after losing it so like we're not even

i'm just uninspired by this move i think that's the only thing i can say here it was a huge fast move it was fun but i don't think it broke even through any key levels or resistance as of now i mean i don't know if you're you're thinking of lines but you to see, like, I needed to see this above like 28.5, 28.6 to start really thinking that, hey, 31's back in play, right? I don't think we've even left this range that we just dropped into. And this move didn't even retrace the entirety of the drop that we just saw like a week ago in one hour. Yeah. And Friday, we got a lot of people looking towards maybe we get an announcement. The most likely scenario would be a delay, in my opinion. But if we get a delay or a denial, we're going to drop. I think we'll drop at least a little bit because again, I think some of that big green

candle was, hey, Friday, we might get the approval. This might be the start for that. And so if we get a delay, I think there'll be a slight amount of disappointment to potentially lead to a bit more consolidation and retracement from that big green candle. Yeah. Going back to gold, I remember there was a story not that long ago and a few people said it, but Mike Novogratz basically said, listen, if we break the all-time high, gold goes straight to 3,000. Yeah.

I mean, it's honestly, I look around at everything in the markets and I say, where is the most opportunity for the potential of a hype market? And anything that's the closest to all-time highs, you got to keep on the top of your list because we know from crypto, the power of all-time highs, it's when gold can be really boring for a decade, but if you get that price discovery, it happens very quickly. And then you've got your miners and your leveraged miner ETFs. And that's where there's significant opportunity. So again, just keep it on your radar for the next couple of months. Because if that shapes up, the metals will steal the headlines for a while. I want to point out something you said. You talked about the cup and handle, which is actually, this is the monthly guys. So that's the tiny cup and handle over here.

Yeah. And then, yeah. But guys, if you want to see how fast gold can go up, by the way, then look at this. Look at the uptrend that gold was in from basically 2000 to 2011. I mean, absolutely parabolic. But then if you zoom out on the monthly too, you have a much bigger cup and handle here. I mean, that is a perfect cup and handle right into effectively the previous all-time high. Yeah, it went slightly above. I think it was 1920 and this one went more volatility. But again, it's those other instruments, whether it's playing it through futures or playing it through leveraged ETFs, where it can be significantly worthwhile. Yeah, I agree with that. Absolutely. So for you, is this one of those you buy it when it breaks the all-time high, like you buy it into price

discovery? Or is there a different entry you're looking for? I'm talking about more long term. I know you trade in and out on a day. Yeah. I've got my longer term no touch metals positions that I'll hold for decades just to have some diversification. I do have some initial swing positions, some small nibbles to make sure I'm staying on top of it and watching it. And what I would like to see to add to that is give me a bit more upside on gold. And then I'll look to enter the next weekly consolidation. And then I'll use the low as my stop. And my thesis will be, you know, that's either the low before this cup and handle breaks out or I'm wrong. And I'll stop out of those positions. And silver has been a good bit stronger than gold over the last couple of weeks. Generally, what happens in the metals market is silver will lead in both directions, just like all coins will often lead in both

directions in terms of the percentage moves that we see. And so if silver is leading, that shows us, you know, that traders and investors have more confidence. They want the higher volatility. And so I will often watch the gold compared to silver chart, or let's just do silver compared to gold. So silver compared to gold, and you can see it's on its monthly timeframe. We're just tightening up over the last year. And so if this were to break bullish, that would show us silver gaining a good bit relative to gold. And that would be bullish. And just go back and look at this chart and look at, well, anytime silver led gold significantly, what was happening in the metals? And you'll find that those were the metal breakouts and the metal bull markets taking place. So bull breakouts- Silver is just a shit coin. Silver is just a gold shit coin.

There you go. I'm sorry. I didn't want to put words in your mouth. It's almost like a leveraged position on gold to some degree. Yeah. So I mean, silver won't be in blue sky breakout. You know, if gold gets there, silver is still a ways away. But in terms of the percentage moves in the volatility, leveraged silver ETFs should see some significant upside as well. Hey, you guys might remember the end of 2018, Bitcoin topped at like $20,000 and then dropped massively. And Ethereum went on the most epic run for the next month and a half after that to make its own all time high.

Maybe gold could end up being the once you see gold top, maybe you see silver runs of the highs. It wouldn't be a surprise to do the exact same thing. There are definitely some similarities to be drawn between the relationship of these sectors and the different parts of the individuals in the sectors. Yeah, absolutely. So is there anything else that you're watching right now? By the way, do you watch any other metals? I don't, but I know that there's people who are pretty deep in the different metals

who watch palladium and platinum and then obviously, you know, more, the ones that have more utility, the coppers and such. Yeah. Every week I check in on copper, you know, copper has got a tightening monthly range here. I'll check in on platinum. It's pretty much gold, silver, platinum, copper. I've never traded them, those two, but I, you know, it's just something I keep an eye on. Other things in the market that I'm watching and this, you know, we could dedicate maybe next week the whole show to it. But cannabis is is the most beat up sector in the market.

I mean, eat your heart out. Altcoin bears like this is the the bear chart is the weakest thing in markets. But we got a headline yesterday of health and human services, you know, recommends to the DEA to reschedule cannabis to schedule three. And, you know, essentially, the path for cannabis has been hype and euphoria bull market leading up into Biden election, you know, we've got the Democrats, the House, the Senate, and then just, oh, my God, nothing's changing. It's all the same, the system's intact. And, and so that's just been we're in a depression phase. But you look at the volume spike here, this is MSOS, the ETF, but massive volume, potentially coming to life a

little bit. It's still a long road ahead. We know how long it takes in politics for things to shift. But I know I'm going to make a significant amount of money again, in this sector. And we just are waiting very patiently for the fundamental federal catalyst. That's inevitable. I mean, we are only going one direction in terms of sentiment. And so I am just not falling asleep on this sector. Yeah, that looks so bottomy, right? I mean, that is just the definition of depression. And listen, these altcoins can go to zero, but marijuana is not, right? Yeah. I mean, these companies- You have an altcoin chart like that, that you're like, oh, this could go down 99 more percent than

literally touch zero. So, yeah. Some of these companies can definitely go bankrupt and go under, but they have some assets. I mean, they're actual tangible things. And one of the major things with the relisting or the rescheduling, what that would do is, right now there's major tax disadvantages because of how things are set. And one of the major companies, Green Thumb, they put out a comparison. It's called 280E, if you want to Google 280E for any of your viewers. But if that were to get repealed or changed, it's $100 million difference in their bottom

line, which is obviously very significant. So again, just the potential and uplisting. All these companies are on the OTC, they're on the penny stock junk exchanges, there's no liquidity, you know, a lot of people are restricted from even buying them. So it when they uplist, just knowing that, you know, there's there's a hype run coming, whether it's in a year or whenever, I think, you know, Biden, the administration might hold out the headline closer to the election to try and ride some of that momentum. Yeah, you got it up right there. There you go. So it's worth paying attention to. Maybe we're

still early at this point, but I'm very confident that I'm going to make some significant gains in this sector for a fourth. I've been through so many hype sectors in cannabis in my 13 years of trading that I know another one's coming. Just patiently waiting. Like the huge, we just know another crypto cycle is yet to come. It's just hard to time the bottom. Awesome, man. Anything else we might've missed? I mean, I would love to actually, if you have, if we can dig deeper into that next week, that would be really awesome.

Let's do it. Sounds great. That'd be really interesting. I owned, I mean, I lost quite a bit of money on not paying attention to marijuana stocks that were just sort of like in an IRA or something. I was down. I won't say I lost quite a bit of money on not paying attention to marijuana stocks that were just sort of like in an IRA or something. I was down. I won't say I lost. You're an investor. There was a time when I was really passionate about Kron. Do you remember that one, CRO? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's so many lessons to be learned from how this has played

out over the last few years. Yeah, it's definitely worth paying attention to. Now I literally am just like, as we're talking, yeah, I mean, that cron chart looks exactly like what you just showed me, basically. It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. Okay. Well, a lot of downsides, a lot of downsides. A lot of bag holders, a lot of overhead supply to get through for sure. Good news, I think I started buying it back then in 2007, 18. So it's not 17, 18.

So it's not as miserable as it looks. All right, David, thank you so much for your time guys. Everybody obviously follow him on Twitter, but also once again, I tell you every week, check his YouTube channel.

He goes much more in depth. We're sort of scratching the surface here on these basic ideas, but his, his shows are incredible tons of insight, and frankly, a lot more than you're going to get from me. So that's why he's here, because we like to have guests who are better than the host. So thank you, Dan, very much. Thanks a lot, Scott. All right, guys. Quite a day, man. Three awesome guests. Really great insight there. I'm also quietly watching gold as well. I own some, and I think that that could be an incredible trade.

And I do think at this point, going back to the ETF, we're definitely at the when, not if phase. I think that while 95% sounds like a huge number, it's just inevitable, right? At some point, Bitcoin spot ETF will be approved. It's always been inevitable. It's just attaching a time to it is very, very, very difficult. Otherwise, guys, we're going to dive more into the news about Uniswap, the class action suit that was thrown out there, as well as talking about the Brian

Armstrong, 10 things he would build if he was starting again in crypto right now. Really interesting stuff. We're going to do that on Twitter spaces. And hopefully we don't get any massive breaking news that rocks the market and changes everything in the middle of spaces like it tends to. Also, I saw some comments and I see people constantly asking me about what's going on with BitBoy. I want to tell you guys, I don't do soap operas and drama. I'm officially opting out for now of watching that soap opera or reporting on it. That's it. Not going to happen. Anyways, guys, I will see you back tomorrow. Oh, Friday. Tomorrow, because last week Nathaniel wasn't there. Nathaniel Whittemore and I starting our new Friday show here,

which I think will go to both of our podcast channels. He's obviously the breakdown. I will listen to his podcast every single day. It's great. It's like 10 minutes, tells you the most important thing of the day. You put it on 2X, five minutes, you're out of here. And we're going to be doing every single Friday, basically a review of the top five most impactful stories of the week to get you guys set the right tone for the weekend. So I'm really looking forward to doing that. Get it going. That's all I got for you guys. I will see you tomorrow or on Twitter spaces or on Twitter, but hopefully not in person, like out in front of my house or anything. Bye. Let's go.