The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Just Got A $30 Billion Buyer - JPMorgan Confirms

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Bitcoin is entering a new phase where the biggest moves are no longer driven by retail hype but by corporate treasuries and Wall Street capital flows. JPMorgan now estimates Strategy could buy up to $30 billion worth of Bitcoin this year alone, while the company behind it is reportedly shifting away from its famous “never sell Bitcoin” stance—signaling a major evolution in how BTC is managed at scale. At the same time, Coinbase earnings show continued pressure from slowing trading activity, even as the industry pivots toward stablecoins, subscriptions, and regulation-driven growth, with U.S. crypto legislation momentum building that could reshape the entire market structure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitcoin just got a $30 billion buyer confirmed by J.P. Morgan. I'm going to let you guess who that might be, what company and what guy might possibly buy $30 billion of Bitcoin this year. It's a huge headline. It'll shock you. Let's get into the show right now. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. I hope you're all having an amazing day like I am. Tired boss. Knock it alive. It was a whirlwind over at Consensus in Miami Beach. Got home late last night and right back to it today, obviously for the morning stream and then the Daily Wolf on Yahoo this afternoon. And to be quite frank, we have kind of the same recycled stories going around over and over and over again. Even the headlines for crypto news right now are

largely someone said something at consensus, right? We had CZ showing up in person at consensus. That was a really big news. I know that Rand Nooner didn't interview with him in a Miami hotel and they made him sign an NDA and he was like, why am I signing an NDA? And apparently it was because CZ didn't want people to know he was in Miami Beach and was going to show up on stage instead of virtually and then he got the hell out of Miami. Interesting life that guy has.

the minute he tells anybody where he is, he has to basically leave. That's from the people on the ground telling me that, not just my take. But he basically, you know, talked about quite a few things in the panel. I didn't watch the whole thing, but talking about Binance U.S. coming back, the United States needing that liquidity. Cool. All right. That's fine.

I think the United States has plenty of liquidity, to be honest. But all players are welcome and competition is welcome. And I think everybody at least can admit that the way that the U.S. versions of most crypto exchanges were just annihilated by the last administration and by the last market was bad. And they should all be able to operate here in peace. But the first story that we have today is seven ideas from consensus that show crypto's shift toward traditional finance. So obviously we're going to be doing the Daily Wolf later today. we'll more specifically unpack some stories. But I think what's it more interesting is talking about what we saw on the ground at consensus.

And so first of all, you know, there was a mixed bag, I think, of opinions on Bitcoin Vegas last week. So every single person I asked and I spoke to, I was like, hey, how was Vegas? Did you go? And they were like, no, this didn't go this year. Nobody like with any great reason for why they didn't go, they just felt like, I, they didn't even want to spend time in Vegas because Vegas is obviously a shit show. a lot of them saying, I don't see how what you can talk about at a Bitcoin conference anymore for three days, but that's never changed. You just talk about Bitcoin. And, you know, somebody was like, you know, three days of panels telling me to just buy Bitcoin and hold. Isn't that exciting? And then, of course,

all the fun around Nakamoto and people not wanting to participate in a conference led by David Bailey and all of those. Everybody had their reasons. But it seemed like everybody came to consensus in Miami. So there was a sentiment that token 2049, which was also supposed to be last week in Dubai was canceled, and that would benefit the Bitcoin conference, which was the same week. But clearly, everybody who was planning to go to Dubai ended up coming to Miami. And people loved it.

It was a great, great conference. I was blown away. I always tell this story. You've probably heard it, but you're here, so screw you. In 2023, I went to consensus in Austin, Texas. I think it was 23 after FTCS and all of that. was the most depressing. I might as well have been at a crypto funeral instead of a crypto conference. All the booths were like bankruptcy attorneys and lawyers. I'm not kidding. Nothing exciting.

And we thought it was over. And now we're in a quote unquote bare market. I have to do the quotes over here so you can see them. Quote unquote bare market. The price is, you know, down as low as 80,000. Terrible. I know. But they did go below 60. We had more than the 50% drawdown. And nobody there was talking about price. There's just wild on. optimism about the industry. And it is because of this shift toward traditional finance. I've mixed feelings on that, to be honest. There's just no fun in crypto anymore. It's not, you know, as much as I was a skeptic, critic of the metaverse and NFTs and defy and people got wrecked and all those. At least there used to be some fun here. Now, like,

fun is talking about J.B. Morgan. Okay. You know, uh, let's see what the seven narratives that they, they believed were, were the big ones. Crypto markets are being read through macro lens. Crypto is increasingly being evaluated through the lens of global liquidity alongside things like policy or product development. I don't really think so. To be honest, I think it's become much more of a macro asset, but I don't think it's more tied to liquidity than it ever was in the past. I don't think that's really accurate. And I think that, you know, maybe institutions view it through a macro lens, but most of us just buy Bitcoin because we want to opt out of the macro lens. I don't necessarily agree, but that was a narrative that was circulating. Stable coins are

becoming a practical tool for moving money. I think that's obvious. The key conversations over and over and over again were stable coins and tokenization over and over and over again. And it's hard not to have those conversations. Regulatory clarity is shaping how capital is deployed. I think that's absolutely true. I think that right now everybody's waiting on the Clarity Act. I still don't think it's happening, but maybe I have a little more optimistic. 20, 25% chance instead of 5% chance after having conversations on the ground, but we'll get to that. But yeah, I mean, regulatory clarity, clearly. The regulators are plowing ahead regardless of legislation.

If they get legislation, great. But it's very clear that the CFDC, the one-man CFTC of Michael Seelig, is the only guy, only chairman. And then, of course, Paul Atkins at the SEC, they're pushing forward regardless. And it's giving a lot of confidence for people to build in the industry. Stable coins are beginning to reshape how liquidity moves through the financial system. This is very, very clear. There's a story, you know, that stable coin debit cards are up, you know, 100% year every year. We know people all over the world are using stable coins to say their local currency.

And we even saw stories about Korea and Brazil, central banks basically concerned or blocking U.S. Stablecoin usage for cross-border payments because why would you transact in your local currency if you can just send stable coins and institutions doing that as well? cash management is shifting towards continuous allocation. This is interesting in the context of everything that's happening in defy and with yield. People are talking about the fact that once you put everything on blockchain rails, you no longer necessarily need to just hold cash in an account when you want to spend it. You can have cash in a yield token or, you know, we won't call them algorithmic stable coins.

But like, right, for example, I had Bill Barheight from Abra on. They have their token that earns yield, but you can, You can also spend it like a stable coin. Ethena has that, you know, that's backed by Ethereum staking. And even in my conversation with Saylor, he started talking about defy yield tokens, which we can get to, I guess, later, quite wild. But people are making tokens backed by STRC that earns an 11.5% yield. You can send that token around while it's earning yield and in and out and seamlessly spend. So really an improved way of being able to keep your money in a yield, earn a account, and spend.

it without having to move back and forth. Tokenized private credit is building on existing structures. I have not going to get into that. I didn't listen. That seems a bad idea. Private credit's going so well. Tokenize that shit. Tax reporting is becoming a systems and control requirement.

I think everybody there agreed that the new tax rules are too stringent. It's impossible reporting every single Ethereum gas payment you made on a transaction is absolute nonsense and unsustainable. But for me, you know, I, you know, I, I didn't watch that many panels. I had a lot of conversations. And the narratives are very clear, and it's incredible how much is actually happening. But for me, it was more just exciting to see that there was positive sentiment. There was probably 15,000 people there. I think that's what was reported. But it was well produced. It was all in one huge room, so it's very seamless. You know,

everybody was around. You could have a conversation with anybody that you wanted. There's people building and there's a lot of excitement around crypto. And I think what's more notable is that retail is so beaten down. We've talked about this a lot that who's buying its institutions, not retail. Retail is so beaten down. We've been scammed so many times. We're not coming back, you know, and buying all coins, all that. But institutions have never been more bullish on crypto ever. They don't care about the price. They're excited to build. The question is, how will we as, you know, retail be able to benefit from that. So let's get into the, this has been mentioned

on almost every show I've done this week, but I haven't been able to really give my takes, which I will do, I think, more thoroughly. So Bitcoin Treasury firm strategy breaks from never-sell approach to the flagship crypto, and then our actually headline story here is J.P. Morgan says, shocker. Strategies, Bitcoin buying can reach

$30 billion this year at current pace. Dude is not stopping. And STRC is about to go back to par again, which means we're going to see a few billion dollars in the coming days or weeks of strategy buying more Bitcoin. But this was the story. Bitcoin Treasury firm strategy breaks from never-sell approach to the flagship crypto. So let me tell you a little story.

You know, on Tuesday night, I've been emailing with Saylor and his team for days trying to figure out a time. We were going to have him on the Daily Wolf and then his noon slot got booked. And then I get a message, you know, late that night, that, you know, he's available at 835 in the morning to 905. That's why my show was delayed with Bill Barheight on Wednesday. So I'm like, yeah, we're going to do Sailor at 835. So interestingly, they also said we had to submit the transcript to the SEC

before we were allowed to publish it. Because now that they're floating the idea of STRC bi-monthly, like everything he says publicly basically has to be cleared by the SEC, which is very, very interesting because now when you have a security like STRC, there's what's so interesting here. The SEC pays very close attention to the impact on retail, which is what their job actually is.

And so I wake up in the morning on Wednesday, a little bit groggy. Thursday was grogier after going to Club 11 until 2 plus in the morning on Tuesday night. But I wake up Wednesday morning and I look and I'm like, oh, great, you know, catch up with sailor this morning. We'll talk about STRC. And then I see I open all my apps and it's the news

and all the news is Michael Saylor says he'll sell that coin. So just by Kismet or, you know, serendipity or whatever stupid word we have for good luck. Those words are dumb. The fuck is serendipity.

Serendipity, dude. Stupid. And I'm like, I guess I'll be the first person to interview Saylor and ask him about this. So I did. You know. I said to him before, we've talked a lot, you know, and he never asks me to pull punches or avoid

topics or anything. He was kind of like, that won't be that interesting, but I guess we can talk about it. And I asked him, and he said, listen, and I'll play the clip on the Daily Wolf later, I think. He basically said, listen, just because you're selling Bitcoin doesn't mean that you're a net seller of Bitcoin. And he kind of made the point, if I sell Bitcoin for some reason, an any given time. I guarantee you by the end of that week or month, I can't remember specifically what he said, I'll be a net buyer. I may buy it, sell it on Monday, but buy it back on Friday. So I think that there's a number of reasons and buy more on Friday, right? And now his narrative has changed from buy more Bitcoin than you sell, was one of them, you know, and basically that

you can fund, you know, that with STRC and these things, you know, you can use the appreciation of Bitcoin to earn money and then pay off debts and pay dividends. So I talked to every guest about it this week. You heard a lot of those conversations. But basically the consensus, no pun intended, is that he needs to say these things, like to get the SEC and the regulators off his ass, and he may need to do these things.

So you have this interesting situation with Sailor right now. So, A, like I said, STRC is being very heavily scrutinized by the SEC. Everything is doing is legal, but you know, you have people screaming about it being a Ponzi scheme, all these things. Well, what retail needs to know or what needs to be openly stated is that that dividend will remain and they will keep this at par, even if Bitcoin crashes and things go down. So we have the endless stories about, you know, strategy. Here's an example, right? You've heard them say it. But if Bitcoin price appreciates by just 2.3% annually, we can fund all our dividends indefinitely.

Right, literally infinite. 0%, 43 years, indefinite 2.3%. But what the market needs to know, and what probably the SEC needs to know, that if this goes badly, he would be willing to sell Bitcoin to make sure that retail does not get wrecked. So it's a signal to the market that he literally,

I think at this point, has to say, you can't have this asset unavailable to be put to work to support the security. So I think that that's really what's underlying it here and why he's saying those things. But also, I think the other aspect of this is that if you think about it,

he tried a lot of things before he got to STRC. SDRCA, STRQA, STRD, STD. I didn't say that. And all of the convertible notes. Well, he's openly said, STRC is the product I wish I had done first, but it took all those, creating all those other ones to do this. So I think they also could sell some Bitcoin to close out the sub, you know, the inferior products, like the convertible notes and pay those off. Marathon just did that

with their convertible note. And then use that to blow more capital into STRC and buy more Bitcoin. So I think that that's what we're talking about here. I think that's what's going on. So Saylor, you know, it was an interesting week for him. I think his narrative is changing. Oh, like I said, he literally was talking about tokenization and defy with me. He is not, he's a Bitcoin maxi, but now he's a Bitcoin maxi who would sell some Bitcoin to improve his business and who was heavily pushing specific tokenized versions of STRC that last I checked are not on Bitcoin.

You know, we've talked about the idea of strong opinions loosely held. I give them all the credit in the world for participating and having an open mind and realizing that there's more to do for a treasury company than just to buy Bitcoin. And that's going to set a precedent for other treasury companies to follow. Now, the other story today, and once again, I did the wrong screen. There, Coinbase got wrecked. Coinbase post-deep first quarter loss after sliding crypto prices, shares fall 4%. So I haven't looked at the shares since.

but the short story here is it's kind of a bare market and volumes are down. I mean, we've seen this movie before. It seems so shocking. But, you know, as always, it's results versus expectations. People, for some reason, still expected Coinbase to do exceptionally well this last quarter. They have two quarters of failing in a row, almost $400 million in net losses. What do you do? People don't want to trade crypto.

They're building out other businesses, but retail volume is always gone when prices are down. So, you know, that's kind of the story here. but also they had a seven-hour outage yesterday because of AWS. But the CME was also down, and I don't see that being reported widely in the same outage. But yeah, as I said, we all know that Coinbase, in my opinion, will still be one of the top five companies in the United States. Yeah, I cannot be convinced otherwise. And so I think it's going to be just fine. Prices will go back up, and it'll be the cure for quite literally everything.

Now, I think the last major topic, obviously, that we had on the ground all day, er day. Clarity Act. Robin Hood CEO says U.S. very close to passing Crypto Clarity Act. Okay. I talked to Patrick Witt. That'll come out. I don't know, man. We just conversations.

I don't know whether they'll come out. Patrick Witt is the new Boh Hines, right? David Sacks and Bo Hines and Patrick Witt. David Sacks, Bo Hines, Patrick Witt, right? And we had a long conversation on camera and off camera about the Clarity Act. It definitely obviously says he thinks it's going to get done, but admits that we're on a very, very tight time frame. We can get a markup in days by the 11th. They said we could get a markup as soon as today.

And we still have to come to agreements on Defi and ethics clause and all these things. And Congress is out of here, man. If this doesn't happen by like July 4th, it's really over. And they're taking a recess for Memorial Day on the 21st. So now it's, they're confident that they can come to an agreement at some point, even on ethics apparently, but they're not confident that they have enough time to do it or that they can push it through while people are still listening. We'll see.

We'll see. I have no idea now. There's a lot of confidence that it's going to get done by people that I do trust, but all those people have a vested interest in it getting done. You know, so it seems like still very unlikely. Let's look up the poly. I'm going to look it up while we're here. Polymarket.

I think it probably skyrocketed this week because we were out there. Let's look. I'm basically done with the show now, so you guys can either tune out or watch me do dumb shit like this. clarity act signed into law in 26, 71%. Okay, the polymarket had it in the 40s. Just like last week? I don't know.

I think we were reporting. It was in the 40s. Yeah, I mean, May 1st, it was at 46. So, you know, in the last eight days, up to 71% chance. I would take that. I would take the other side of that. But I'm a betting man. Could be wrong.

I would take the other side of that. Yeah. Those were the big conversations, I think, at consensus. It was great to see such an awesome conference back in Miami, where crypto conferences belong, you know. But I will say that there was a shocking lack of celebrities and lambos and fancy cars parked outside the venue. It was mostly just, you know, people who I think are taking a measured approach now to the industry,

both on the retail and institutional level. I will say that when we went to Club 11, which is definitely not, which is a nightclub, definitely not a strip club. Definitely not that. There was like, we got there at 10. It was from 7 to 3 that party.

That place is over in 24-7, 365, by the way. Literally you can go there and like have a steak and bottle service at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday. And there were so many, there was like 5,000 people inside. and probably another 2,000 people outside. So there were a lot of people there who were very excited about crypto

at this conference. If that was any evidence, I was definitely not there until something in the morning for no good reason. Listening to, it was the worst music I've ever heard in my entire life.

There was an hour I was trying to leave, but my support system was keeping me there. it was a guy playing like 170 BPM like happy hardcore for an hour and he was like yelling in the mic like everybody jump or something and I was like literally I couldn't jump this fast if my whole life depended on it if I wanted to push myself over the edge like if I was contemplating the end I would lock myself in a car and have this DJ sit in the seat next to me and play for me I think I would be able to do it. This is just coming from an old DJ who just wants to hear like, you know, Michael Jackson song maybe and some like Biggie.

I don't know how you like look out over a crowd and you're like raging and nobody's dancing. Like 5,000 people and you're like, this is going great. Funny story. That same club 11 in my DJ days, I lived in Miami when they opened and I used to DJ there sometimes. and I think the joke was that I was the only DJ who would wake up to go to work. I would like, I had my baby, you know, and I would like give her her bottle and pass her off to my wife. And I would go start DJing at 8.30 in the morning. Don't lie.

Everybody else stayed up and, like, partied and then went to work at 8.30. And I would go and it would be like mobbed, completely packed at 8.30 at the morning. Miami is built different. It's fun to have a little taste of that again for five minutes. Of course, I don't drink or anything. I'm like the 49-year-old sober guy at the club, which is exactly where I think you want to be. In 2026, listening to the worst music ever made.

But the point being, it was very exciting. You're saying what year? Someone's saying, you're saying, I think it was 2015. Yeah. That was a good time. This guy says, you know, the DJ just happens to be listening to this now. We'll cry in the corner later.

I hope so. I had, it took every part of, my ability to keep my wife from going up to him and offering him money to stop DJ. She was like, I'm going to pay him to stop DJing. Like, give me some cash. We got to do something. She's like, how does he not know? It's like, it was bad.

It was really bad, right? Yeah, you were there. We were all there. Honestly, though, like, I like, this is the way I approach life. I don't know why you guys are listening to this. Are you here? But my take on it was like if it was a great DJ or like just a normal night, I probably would never remember that I went there. But I'll be telling the story of this horrible DJ for the rest of my life.

So sometimes if you take the silver lining and the positive view, yeah, I made for a great story and I suffered through, I don't know, one hour for a great story. But man, all the crypto folks were up in there, partying. having a good time. It was fun. It was fun. I regretted it the next morning. It's like, I got to be at the conference center at 745, looking down to like 245. It's a good time. Anyways, guys, yeah, I don't know. Got any more comments over here? What are you guys? Meme coins. That DJ is a perfect metaphor for the crypto bear market. Yes. It's like listening to Vito content. He's saying the same thing over and over again. Why won't the beat change? Yeah, whatever.

Hey, guys, buy Bitcoin. Everyone buy Bitcoin. All right, that's all I got for you. I will see on The Daily Wolf. We'll dig more deeply into these stories when we get there. I don't know. Oh, hi, someone reposted the stream. Good job.

Don't know how that came up. All right, guys. Oh, I just set an outro video. We forgot doing our jobs here. See you guys later. I need a nap.