The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin loses 80K. Crash Imminent? #CryptoTownHall

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

In this episode of Crypto Town Hall, the team recaps key takeaways from Consensus 2026 and breaks down Bitcoin’s resilient price action near $80K. They discuss the maturing industry mindset — where Bitcoin is now treated as a mainstream financial asset — evolving token utility, regulatory progress, and the shifting value models in crypto. The conversation also covers Coinbase’s disappointing earnings and management critiques, Morgan Stanley’s aggressive crypto expansion, and an in-depth debate on MicroStrategy’s $STRC, its yield strategy, risks, and long-term potential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeah, I mean, you know, it works like clockwork. You know, I picked a sarcastic title saying Bitcoin lost 80,000, you know, markets, you know, on the employment report and other thing. Other markets are up this morning, you know, gold, silver, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, just trying to see if I could get people. But of course, literally as we start the show, it goes back up over 80 again. So sorry, guys, I guess the crash is canceled. It was brutal, though.

I got a T-shirt that says I survived the crypto crash. of May 8th, 2020. I mean, all kidding aside, it was fascinating. I mean, Scott and I were both at consensus for three days. And I mean, the only reason I even knew what the prices were was because CoinDesk was putting a ticker on their main stage so I could see it. But I honestly wasn't looking at the market for three days. It was just conversations with actual professionals in the industry and what they're doing.

And I think the most important, my most important, my most important, important observation as far as Bitcoin is concerned. I have two important observations. One, as far as Bitcoin as concerned, quite literally, there are no conversations of why does Bitcoin have value and where is it going. It's just assumed that Bitcoin is moving and becoming a mainstream financial asset, part of the collateral stack, part of what Wall Street does business as usual, and that they're going there. I mean, it isn't even a question. And that is a very, very, big deal. So for all I will say for all the doomers out there, including my, my friend Mr. McClone, who who thinks that Bitcoin should will fall 60% below where it did in the FTX crash

if we have a stock market down is I think you may very well find Bitcoin as much less correlated to the downside than you think if there is a major correction in the markets. I also think that that, you know, in terms of where it goes in the future, that if you get through or in to a cycle, this grinding rally is going to ultimately result in FOMO, but I think it's going to take a lot longer than people think, and it'll be from a much higher price. The other major observation, trying to tee things up for people here, is that crypto and whatever token you're talking about, whatever technology you're talking about, is here to stay, being embraced, but the value models are not what it was in 17 or 21. The value model is, provide utility,

and have a reason for the token to exist before you buy it. And I think that that is just basically assumed by most of the people there. Now, that is not bad for a lot of assets. It is, I mean, you know, Tom Lee thinks it's incredible. I mean, you know, I saw his presentation and think that, honestly, I think that, you know, he's smoking something before he goes up on stage because he's just so extreme about it. But the truth is that it is good for assets. assets that are gaining adoption.

And I had a long talk with the chief counsel for the SEC's Crypto Task Force. Taylor is a great guy. And, you know, the thing that was funniest is when I made the comment that the biggest problem in crypto from a regulatory point of view is the idiocy that because of previous policies and bad rules, that being a security with air quotes around it was a death sentence for crypto. He basically laughed and he said, yeah, you're spot on. Everything should be, but we should basically make it so that it could be usable. And understand, this is not a armchair quarterback. This is someone who's literally on the ground is the general counsel to the crypto task force. The SEC's goal

here is to make digital asset securities something that can be traded with modern technology. And what does that mean? That means that instead of buying a governance token that does, fuck all that you could buy economic stake in a network. Well, I don't know about all the rest of you, but if you ask me, do I want an economic stake in Ando or a chain link? I'd say, hmm, you know, that's pretty interesting. Tell me what the participation is to give me the numbers, but it could be extraordinary. The idea of buying a governance token that you have no idea, what does it mean, however, basically makes my stomach turn. And I think that that's going to be what's going to be the impetus for a lot of the utility tokens going forward.

Okay, that's my long rant for today, Scott. Hopefully this got someone involved. Adam, did you lift your mic? Yeah, I was actually wondering what your thought, after, you know, being there and meeting with people, what your thought then is, you know, on these kind of older protocols that have these governance tokens. And where do you think, how do you think they find a way forward? Well, no, they're not. They're not. They're not fucked if they're smart.

I mean, I think probably all of these places are meeting with. at the SEC and looking to see, can they change the structure in a way to appeal to their investors? I think the smart ones are doing that. But obviously, that's inside information. I don't have any of it. And even if I did, I wouldn't talk about it. So, you know, I think that if you are invested in tokens, it's incumbent upon you to be, particularly governance tokens, is to be talking to the management and trying to find, what are you guys doing?

is this, because there's this new thing that people are all a buzz about, the innovation exemption. I strongly suspect that founders could use that innovation exemption to do something like what I'm talking about, if in fact they think that's what it's going to be. Now, if they want to stay as digital commodities, that's okay too, but then you have to have what's the utility of the commodity. Because the other thing that's happening that people don't realize is behind the scenes, the CFTC staff and SEC staff are working on. rules for digital commodities. It's going to take a while. You won't see anything for some

time. But all this is happening. Does that answer your question, Adam? Not really. I want to know what the real way forward is, you know, for, you know, these, these, you know, teams that had to use these kind of doubt structures just for legal reasons previously. Is there even, I mean, I mean, I know Scott said it jokingly, but I'm kind of like they're stuck. Like, I don't, I don't see like. there's going to be a way forward for these guys other than these kind of, you know, obviously antiquated kind of old Dow models, which kind of totally suck and don't allow real pass through of value. You know, just take a symbol. How's Uniswap going to go through, you know,

come up with a move forward in this environment, you know, or do they just have to wait it out, you know, and just, you know, go forward later, but there's nothing that can happen now. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, do I buy Uniswap now? because it's, you know, nobody knows and now's the opportunity because nobody knows and they'll figure it out because they're a big player? Or, yeah, what's your just general consensus feeling on that?

I don't have one. I mean, I'd say Scott, you know, either your team or, you know, Mario's team should try to get someone senior from Uniswap to come on and tell us. Maybe, but nobody answers those questions. Well, no, they didn't use to, but there's not a whole lot of danger

in answering the question in terms of what they want. to try to do now. That's the thing. I mean, you're right, a year ago, and certainly under Gensler, it would have been suicide to even talk about it. But I don't think it's suicide and talk about it now. I think that the smarter, the smarter projects are going to realize that. But we'll see. I mean, you know, maybe it'll take another six months before they start realizing it. But at some point, they're going to realize it, I think. I mean, it's one man's opinion. I could be wrong. And maybe it's because I have personal friends who are working on this from the, from at the regulators and that I trust and know. But I think that a lot of people in crypto are for obvious

reasons ridiculously skeptical of the government and the regulators because they've cost them so much money that they're gun-shy. But the smart ones are going to be the ones to embrace it first. That's what I think. I mean, as I said, it's different if you're a, you know, an obvious utility token, right? You know, an obvious, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, your use is to pay gas fees, right? You know, your use is to be staked to run validators. You know, in those cases, there's no point. I mean, you don't have to worry about it.

But that's a difference, right? I mean, the head of the Salana Foundation was very clear about that when she talked on the main stage, for example. So that's their point. Anyway, maybe that's- I spoke to Carolyn Pham. Obviously, she's a moon pay now, but she was the, you know, midterm director of the CFTC. has been there for a long time, and she really believes that certainly any layer one, layer two, exceptional, except, et cetera, token is a commodity and it's not even a question.

Like, if it's being used, like gasoline and is burned for a transaction, it's commodity. I agree. And I think that's very clear that. I think the SEC, the difference is there's no pushback against that view. That's a major difference. But I was talking about utility tokens of products. projects, right, you know, that, that are earning revenue. Yeah, those never needed tokens.

Right. So the tokens need to be something. Yeah, exactly. But there are a lot of those. Yeah, 95% of the market, if you had to guess, are probably those, right? Either that or memes. I don't know. I have no idea.

But, you know, here we are. The other big news that came out, you know, this week, you did the interview. and I guess, you know, with Sailor, that's a big topic. The one we didn't put in the title is STRC. And Coinbase earnings. And Coinbase earnings and what they said. So, you know, you want to run with that one? See if we can get somebody to comment.

Sure. Well, I mean, if we wanted to Coinbase, point base earnings obviously down bad. No question there, right? I mean, there was anticipation actually a profit. I think they lost $400-something million net, two-based. bad quarters in a row, but I don't think anybody's surprised that when crypto is in a bit of a winter and retail trading volumes are down that Coinbase and others are going to suffer. So I don't really think it's like a massive indictment or anything. I do find it curious that they laid off

14% of their staff and called it because of AI days before. I find that slightly curious. And at the same day that they, by the way, reported earnings at a seven-hour outage because of AWS. So it was a bad 24 hours for Coinbase. We saw them talking in the past. I didn't, because we were on the ground, I didn't really get to like steer the earnings call or dive too deeply into it, which I intend to do in the next hour before I do the Daily Wolf. But, you know, they had touted that they had these 10 or 11 other business verticals and had done 100 million, whatever the number was in previous earnings. And I don't know if they talked about any of that, but it's very clearly clear that as many things as they're building, retail trading is still

going to be the bulk of their earnings calls up or down. Adam. Yeah, man, I honestly, I think it's time for Brian to find a new leader over there. That's my view. To lay people off at the end of the bull and well into the bear is late. Like, come on, man. I mean, use a little bit of vision. His acquisitions pretty much all suck.

we all know it's kind of a joke what they paid for Kobe's whatever Echo and I just it's so his acquisition suck his ability Derbit was a Derby it was a pretty good acquisition

Okay one I'll give him one But you know Whatever he's they built Internally They're slow They can't move which would say Hey we should acquire outside

to be able to move fast But they move fast into directions that are not great and don't bring in revenue. They overpay. It's just, he's just not a good operator that way. I mean, I just, you know, so burned last cycle with the NFT, you know, marketplace that, you know, caught everybody's attention for literally eight months to finally release it and release it into the biggest nothing burger of all time. You know, he just, he just can't do it. I don't know how else.

He just can't do the kind of operating. you need, I think, at a company that should be the leader in the space. Yeah, and he did it last cycle, too. I mean, he was spending all the way through the bull. And we had this same thing. I don't know the drawdown, but it was like, I don't know, 70, 80 percent drawdown on the stock last time. I had imagined the same thing is going to happen here again. And, yeah, I just think it's time for him to step aside.

That's my view, because I just don't think he, I think he's acquisitions generally other than whatever, Derbit, have sucked hardcore. And I mean, I'd love one person to defend the Kobe acquisition, you know, $400 million for a product that they literally could have built. It's not like some outrageous product. The product itself, by the way, had almost no, I mean, it had some traction. But, and I understand you're buying kind of a face. But, dude, $400 million, come on, man. It's just, it's hard to even fathom how bad an acquisition. position that was. If Brian's listening, Cryptotown Hall is available for purchase, we'll do it for 30. We'll do it for 40 grand. I think he, yeah, I mean, I'm just saying at the 10th,

literally, and we've had as many people broadly listening a week as, you know, Echo had. I mean, we just got to get you guys, we just got a K-Y-C-A-M-L everybody in our following. Scott, don't let Brian do that. He's going to make an AI avidavit. and then he's going to fire you and everybody else on this program. You, me, Dave, Adam, Gary, Gary, AI's coming for you. Zero dollar salary. Yeah, I mean, Dave, we're really cleaning up over here at Cryptotown Hall. So, I mean, you know, this is non-for-profit that are right.

Yeah, this is a not-for-profit that actually is not-for-profit as opposed to the ones that that everybody uses as their corporate piggy banks in D.C. But, you know, that's a different story. But look, the real story with Coinbase this week, the earnings are bad, but the other story was worse. And that is the ongoing price war of Morgan Stanley undercutting Schwab. Yeah. And Schwab will respond.

And Morgan Stanley will respond. But they also wildly undercut Robin Hood and Coinbase, right? Right. Well, that's my point. I'm saying that from a coin-based perspective, if you're margins, and they manage to keep margins that are triple-digit basis points for quite frankly for four or five years more than I thought they would. But then again, I didn't think Gensler was going to come in and crush it either way he did

and not in a good way. But now that everybody's going to be offering it, I mean, keep in mind, retail trading, the model for retail trading in equities went from effectively the same as where coin basis margins are still, down to when it deregulated, down to something, but it very quickly, within years, ended up at zero because retail traders for market makers are profitable to trade again. So Robin Hood uses a similar model. There's no explicit cost. There's just market making spread involved. And so Robin Hood's been cheaper for a while, but it's part of their system and people don't really know it.

It really wouldn't take much for retail trading to drop into the single digit or very low double digit basis points. And that from Coinbase's perspective would be catastrophic for their earnings, at least in the short run. Now, they have other areas of earnings, but they're sized based on that cash count. And that's always been the issue with Coinbase. It doesn't mean that they can't survive, thrive, and grow, but it means that they have to adapt to that world. Yes, Adam. I'm selling my coinbase. I'm out. That's all I know. No, I don't really have much else. You know, my shit on Brian Fest is over. I just don't see anybody. Even, even like the one person in the company who actually like moves the needle attention-wise, Jesse. I mean, Jesus Christ, they leaned into that creator coin nonsense for six months, solid. Like, this was going to change the world, you know. And never admitted that it was about, I mean, it was all. always just know. And then finally agents came around and, oh, we're

in agents now. And it's like, really? I just, yeah, I honestly just think it's bad management at the core. And, you know, I appreciate what he's built over there, you know, and going through the really, really difficult, you know, legal structures and stuff that had to take place to keep him alive. But at this point in time, it's a

shit show. And everybody's just wondering how you really feel. Bro, you were around during the NFT cycle, man. And if you were in NFTs at all, you remember Coinbase NFT, and this was going to change the world. This was it. This was like everybody's exit liquidity. It was the biggest dud of all time.

I mean, just to be fair, Facebook also rebranded as meta for the meta version. They're doing it right. Yeah, but we can't argue. Zucks a way better opportunity. Get Zuck over there. Then you'll have something, man. Not sure. If nothing are data out for sure and weaponized against us, at least.

Yeah, well, that's probably everyone. Yeah, Dave, I think the Morgan Stanley story around that is actually really huge. Do we lose? Oh, yeah, you're there. I didn't even think about that in context of the earnings call, but it's a big deal. The other thing is, you know, people are getting it very wrong, but I understand it as well. Yeah, well, we understand it because you, you talk to him and he was very... I understand it because he told me flat to my face when I asked him, hey, he'd sell Bitcoin.

Yeah. What does that answer to do you know? Well, I mean, I think that the most important thing that he said was that first, that the notion of Bitcoin on a balance sheet that is impossible by covenant to be sold would make it an impaired asset. And the accounting treatment of that would be is disastrous. I mean, it's really bad. So it can't be. It literally can't be that way. I mean, that's the first thing.

Now, he said a lot more than that in your interview, which I guess, you know, which you'll get out in the next couple days and people should watch to understand it. But the notion of never selling is silly. The notion of continually net buying makes sense. And that's basically what they did. Exactly what he said. Yeah, I mean, it was quite a day, right? I woke up Wednesday morning, groggy, you know, late Tuesday conference nights. And I looked at my schedule.

I'm like, oh, we finally know, because I've been going back and forth with him on a time. And we were like, let's just do it before the conference opens at like 8.30 in the morning. And then I literally like, okay, I'm like, cool. that's confirmed. And then I look at the news. The first two stories and Michael Saylor says he would sell Bitcoin to inoculate the market.

I was like, oh, that worked out well for me. But yeah, I mean, I think maybe the story underneath, and I kind of talked about this morning, it's what Bill Barheight said and others, is also that, you know, when you have SCRC, which is a retail-facing security, the SEC and retail need to hear

that you're not going to allow this thing to collapse no matter. or what, and the best way to assure that long term is to be willing to sell Bitcoin to make that happen, right? I mean, even, you know, that's not why he's saying he's doing it, but that seems very, very obvious. If you say, I will never sell my Bitcoin and, you know, this thing drops to, you know, STRC drops to 50 bucks or the, you know, they run through the cash reserves and Bitcoin drops 50%. The market, the SEC, they need to know that it has the assets actually backing it in practice

and not just in words. Yeah, no, it's true. And the other big thing is, is that the notion that what he said changed the investment case is, I mean, it's just assonite, right? You know, if you're buying, you know, he gave a presentation later that was more shilled and, you know, more, more sales pitch than good discussion. Your discussion was fantastic. I'm so glad that I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and got there.

Yeah, you got there early for that. Yeah, because I knew I was. wanted to listen to it. And it was, and of course, it's very hard to listen to live, you know, live content, except when nobody's in the place, then you could hear pin drop in the convention center. So it was great. But the difference is, is, look, what he said is if you want to get enhanced yield and you believe Bitcoin is not, is not a Ponzi scheme, if you believe that it's real, that it is, it has a basic floor and it's an asset, you know, in, you know, along the rain of gold, then STRC for yield seekers make enormous sense.

If you believe that Bitcoin is going to significantly outperform other assets, then MSTR is the asset you want to own. And they have a variety of other instruments in between the two, or you could just buy Bitcoin. And that's obvious. I mean, that micro-stratory is going to underperform in period, in bare markets and in sideways markets, right? STRC will continue to chug along in those markets.

And that's the point. And, you know, he also made the point that, you know, their leverage is really low. And everyone's worrying about it, oh, my God. Well, you know, if he keeps buying, what's it going to get to, et cetera? Well, maybe at some point that's something to worry about. Certainly, you know, right now, I guess it's leverage is between two and three times. Maybe if it gets to five to ten times, you start worrying about it. But we're not even close to that yet.

Right. Yeah. Andre. Andre, good. Hi, happy Friday. I hope you can hear me well, working. Yeah, you sound good. Okay, perfect.

So I think, like, I don't see any kind of imminent insolvency risk or bankruptcy risk either. But I think eventually strategy, I think they would effectively be forced to choose between increasing leverage or abandoning the pack. I think that's the key risk for STRC. So I think like if you think that BTC declines, right, or will continue to stay in the bear market, right? I think leverage mechanically increases because assets fall relative to liabilities, right? Which in turn weakens SCRC credit quality. And I think that deterioration could push STRC below par,

triggering this kind of automatic dividend step. outlined in the SEC filing because nobody talks about this but they actually have to step up their dividend payments if STRC is trading below a certain threshold I think it's 95 or so right it's actually in the SEC filing and so the higher the dividend then increases the cash burden right reinforcing the same dilemma right either take on more debt right more leverage or abandon the pack right so don't trade close 200 so I think, yeah, I mean, apart from this, I think it's worth mentioning that strategy has this kind of option to cut dividends, right, by 25 base points per month, also per the SEC filing, right? It's something I think that's not being highlighted anywhere, right? I mean, yes, sure, but.

But exercising that option would itself likely imply a break of the pack, right, again. Why? And so because the PEC itself, right, depends on the dividend yield. So the present value of the bond, it's essentially a bond, right? It's perpetual. It's like a perpetual bond, right? And so. Andre, obviously they need that flexibility.

If the Fed, if Warsh comes in and we look at a world where instead of three and a half percent, interest rates are two and a half percent, you don't think strategy is going to cut their, their yield down to 10.5% or 9.5%? Of course. Of course. I mean, yeah, of course. Then they cut the dividend yield 100%. But what is worse? It increases in risk rates, right? We don't know that actually. But you want, I would love the prediction market that would let me bet against that. That's all I have to say. I mean, that fund features, they imply no change whatsoever. I'm aware. I'm aware. When he gets confirmed, then, That will probably be my first Kalshi bet if I can, but that's besides a point.

They tend not to how to play those markets, but that one seems obvious. But anyway, but the point is, is that, and I actually still think 11, that the STRC's yield is, I mean, look, it's designed to be, to become a giant vacuum cleaner to Hoover up liquidity. That's what it is. And it feels like it's overpaying to me, but I don't know that it needs to be that. I agree. 100% agree because if you look at similar securities, right, let's say US preferred equity, right? General index, S&P preferred equity index, yields 6% dividend yield, right?

So that's the benchmark, 6%. If you look at higher bonds, even like B minus rated B, single B rated high bonds in the US, like 7%, 7.5, right? If you look at even triple C high bonds, they yield probably. 13%. So it's like, but we know that FCRC has a ball off like 1% realised whole. So

it's yielding like a deep junk bond, but it's trading like a sovereign bond, right? It doesn't really make sense. And in our conversation he actually said that, you know, the next unlock is squashing that volatility even further down and offering a slightly lower yield product. You know, like zero vol at 8% or something.

He said that. Dave, did you think so I thought obviously the never sell your Bitcoin part would kind of be the biggest astounding revelation in our conversation, which was only like 35 minutes or something, which is like, that's just an introduction for Saylor. But then he started talking about defy and tokens and tokenized STRC and yield tokens. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, that was the other major takeaway from consensus from conversations that I had.

And I don't know how many, but dozens of people realizing the, The fact is, like, you've heard Carlo and I talk about this on this show many times that what is coming post-stable coin adoption and post-tokenization is a much higher velocity of financial markets. And that will mean that sitting in static bank deposits and stuff is going to go away, regardless of whether or not stable coins are paid, because people won't be keeping their money in stable coins. What fascinated me was multiple people from very large firms, though I'm not going to get them in trouble by naming them, but we'll talk about, we'll say top 10 largest financial firms, not just understanding, but telling us about sweet products that are being built in order to be able to trade whatever and making rails for individuals. I mean, Say, we're talking about STRC being tokenized. What you're basically seeing is, wait a minute, you can have a tokenized very much. You can have a tokenized version of STRC that pays 11% that's an actual real regulated thing that you can use and you can get access to by pledging USDA on a defy channel.

And the answer is yes. And that is what's coming. But I heard it not just from him, Scott. I heard it from large banks from various people that they know this is coming, not this STRC. You know what? the biggest, biggest tail risk is for a strategy next year. I generally think it's all about how long the cash buffer lasts, right,

and whether he can replenish it, right? As it stands, I think the cash buffer is already less than two-half years, right? Say, I said it would before. And a cliff to be aware of are these put options, right, on his convertible nodes that are already underwater, right, and they become exercisable in September. 2027. So I think the market will at some point front trend is if strategy

the stock price doesn't rise and or they are unable to show that they can raise more cash and refinance. Yeah, I see, I would actually like this here, a grain of salt response to that if we were going to talk about it. But I'm not a co-host, so I can't bring

them up. But I saw them before, but I don't see them now. So, yeah. I'm like, I'm generally bullish on MSFER because like if you if you believe we're in like a recovery phase, bottoming out phase, and Bitcoin will start its new bull market soon, right? Then of course, MSTR will be fine, right? And because these convertible, these put options in the convertibles, they will, they won't be exercised, right? But I think if you stay in a kind of, yeah, prolonged bear market, that's actually risk.

So here's a funny conversation. So thank you, Andre, for teeing me up. It's kind of fun. So, you know, on this show, you know, what, six weeks ago when we were around 60, I made the comment that my base case is this is the bottom. We're going to have a grinding rally and people aren't even going to call it a rally for a long time. Now, here we are at 30% higher. We've been grinding up for weeks and we're still talking about it like it's not a rally. And that was actually Tom Lee, Tom Lee's best point that he made on his. As he said, the thing about rallies when bear markets end and bull markets start is it takes months before people even recognize the fact that the bull market has started. And I think that's exactly where we are.

And look, it's partially because we have the war, because we have oil prices, still elevated, although they've come down. I'm not, you know, Gary's up here. He could talk more about the oil market. I actually don't even understand how oil drop that below 100 again, given that nothing is really resolved. but that's besides the point. But it feels to me like the selling exhaustion in Bitcoin is real and that just strategy buying and a few other things buying is enough to continue to push the market forward.

And I don't think retail is really there yet. And you know, you don't really have a bull market. It's never been, right? It's never been the previous cycle. Yeah. No retail. That's true. And without retail.

I mean, you know, Gary's. Can I interrupt with an innocent question before we pull up the expert carry on the on the topic. Didn't that happen with practically everything in the last one and a half year, Bitcoin road and it was sort of a market front running, the retail traction, and then it happened with gold and not gold so much, but silver, it was the obvious, you know, runner for the next six months. And then it happened again with oil.

Don't you think so? And this might be a totally stupid take. Well, I don't think oil. I think oil is different, right? I think silver for sure. I mean, in fact, I don't think anything is different. Like, oil went to negative COVID. I don't think anything is beyond speculation. And front running with large capital by these large market players is just the leftover of whatever is left over in the market. I mean, I think oil trades differently than I think silver is a different story. Silver is absolutely a retail story. It's absolutely from You know, there's been lots of speculation.

It's in an elevated level. Where are we? Are we over 70 again? Somewhere on my screen. I can't find it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's up over 80 again. And, you know, but that's because of structural reasons in the silver market.

Oil is much harder because the spot market has been leading the futures market more than the other way around during this since the war started. So I don't know those two are concerned. But yeah, you're absolutely right about, you know, retail speculation being in, there's more retail speculation in gold than silver than there has been in Bitcoin. That's true. That hasn't changed. It might, but it hasn't changed yet. As far as Bitcoin is concerned, Gary, I don't know.

I was, it was packed. But were you there for your brother's presentation? No, I didn't go. Yeah, I didn't think I didn't see you. It was really good. He was outstanding. Oh, yeah. well, he's seasoned.

Second nature to him. Hey, back on oil, I think what you're seeing is you're seeing demand destruction, right? Like, this is the beauty of oil, the higher it goes. And you're right, the prompt market at 125, that is destroying demand. So flights aren't leaving, restaurants aren't opening, you know, people buying. LPG in India aren't going to sell tacos. And this is, this happens very, very rapidly. And that's why we're not seeing, we're not going to see these $200 price forecaster just so ignorant, with all due respect. You'll just have demand just go to, I'm not playing. I can't make a margin

at $200 or so. This will get under control. The longer you give it, the more they'll get, logistics back in shape, they'll pressurize wells. And one thing we do know, though, is every research product, every project that's ever been thought about on developing another MMBTU or another kilowatt of energy, dude, every one of those papers, research documents have been dusted off and people are looking at them seriously. So you're going to see production come on. Monster in the next probably 12 months. You can already see, right?

U.S. oil exports are new old-time highs, right? And even like there's an interesting time series, I think, on Bloomberg, global oil in transit, right, has picked up from the lowest, right? It's re-accelerating. So Gary brings up an interesting point about oil, is that as the price goes up, and especially as it goes above $100 a barrel, there's demand destruction. But with Bitcoin, it works differently.

As the price goes higher, the demand for it goes higher, because it's a VEbbling good. And so that's a weird thing in economics. Well, and Grain, like, keep your mic open because this is very interesting to me. Not only that, but the higher the price goes, it destroys demand, but at the same time,

it has everybody and their brother chasing another project. So you end up with this bloat of fucking energy in 12 months, and you end up with a supply shock. to the other side. That's why oil, look at Nat gas what it's doing. This is

so bullish for the AP, the high, you know, the data centers, the API guys, anybody that's in the future, like Nat gas at $2.50 cents, why is that? Because everybody's drilling for oil,

dude. And with oil comes water and comes natural gas. And I mean, we're going to be swimming. in that gas. I didn't mean to know about you. I think it's a very interesting phenomenon. It won't happen to Bitcoin.

It doesn't happen with Bitcoin because as the price goes up and the demand goes up with Bitcoin, the emission rate, the so-called halving that happens every 210,000 blocks, which is every four years, continues the same thing. They can't bring more Bitcoin online in order to fill demand.

And that's why you don't have this, you don't have an increase of supply that happens that Gary just said. While this is unknown to probably most people, I actually have private placements in the oil industry. And I've been doing this since COVID. And it was interesting that we had some, and they're based in Pennsylvania, in the U.S. And I just got a phone call from the person that runs the fund.

And he's like, oh, we had an unbelievable first quarter. And he reported the numbers. And what happens was exactly what Gary just said. there was a whole bunch of wells that were offline that they brought them online. So I got a windfall in oil that I was not getting for the previous year and a half, two years because the price was low. Now, but the important part that what Gary said is as the price of oil skyrockets, the problem is you have demand destruction. So that's the way it all works. And then as more supply comes on, you have this boom cycle right now where the price goes high. And then you have a bust

as more supply comes online. So that's what happens with. oil. With Bitcoin, it's fundamentally different. But I did want to address, I can address what Andre was saying about strategy and maybe that's helpful. Is that right if I could pivot to that? Fine with me. Yes, so yes, I was at the Bitcoin conference last week and I said this already online. I was talking to Fong. I walked up to him. There's a public setting. There's other people around this, not a private conversation. And I said, one of the questions that I get, all the time from people is how do you guys manage your cash? Like, would you rather do it as a lump sum in order to pay dividends, or do you see it that

you would do it over time? Like, do you just acquire enough cash to pay the monthly and quarterly or do it a full year out of time? And Fong looked at me and he just said, so you're asking if we have a strategy about how we acquire cash? He goes, yeah, that's it. And he said, we're long, Bitcoin and short cash. He goes, we can raise cash anytime we need it.

and we're not concerned about it. And so if you have a company that can raise the full years worth of dividends in one week, they have no concerns about paying the dividends. So when you were saying before about Andre, that if they lose the peg or somebody thinks they're going to lose the peg on STRC, strategy could buy back those shares. They can. That's the whole reason why they said they can sell Bitcoin. As long as the faucet's flowing.

If that's really the way the conversation went, it reminded me very much of Enron. It's awesome, you know, when you have your marks, and I'm not suggesting he's an Enron, by the way. I do not think strategy is a Ponzi, like everybody says. But, you know, you can raise cash as long as the cash is available. But when the cash drops and it's just not like the spigot, like there's no guarantee. That's my point, right? Right, there's no guarantee. But let me give you the interesting point.

And this was in their slide. And by the way, there's a couple of things. I believe it's slide 114 that says the amount of return that SCRC pays will drop over time. And the average they're shown is like it'll drop to about 8% long term. So that's in their deck also. It's not like this stuff is hidden. But the other interesting part about this is that if strategy has, let's say strategy cannot raise money from the capital markets. right well say or said they could sell bitcoin and there's a very particular slide which i posted

before strategy has 129000 bitcoins that are priced over 100,000 dollars that they bought it so what they can do is they can sell their bitcoin which they said they can book a realized tax loss on it right they book a loss on it which is something that they could not something that they said that they would not do but they actually did in they did it absolutely they have done this and they They would be stupid not to do it. Correct. So now they sell Bitcoin, high-cost Bitcoin, and they already told us, see, one of the things that we don't know from the other Bitcoin Treasury companies, we know the average

price, but we don't know how many tranche Bitcoins are at different prices. Strategy gave us that in their presentation. So they have these $1,000,000 high-cost Bitcoins. They sell those Bitcoins, right? And look, if you assume the number is $100,000, right? They don't have to sell a lot. order to cover a billion dollars worth of payments for the full year. And they don't have to do it as a lump sum. And so that's the part when I hear, oh, they're going to lose the peg. It's like they can

continue paying those dividends for 50 years. And that's the part that people are missing is that if you don't believe in Bitcoin, you definitely don't believe in strategy. But I find it weird that people believe in Bitcoin and that strategy is the publicly traded company the most Bitcoin, but we don't believe in what they're doing because it could fall apart. That's the difference between, you know, these other companies that we just talked about and holding other assets. And the liquidity of it, how much it trades per day, again, I would tell people to go to their Q1, 2026 presentation and really the slides after slides 100, you know, basically

spell all of this out. I don't know how you get any more detail than that. But I'll take any questions on that. Hopefully are making sense. I just want to say, like, I'm personally bullish on MSCR, right? I do think they're arbitraging the Fiat world and they're actually, they're accelerating this flow of capital from TratFi into Bitcoin, right, which totally makes sense. As long as you have to expect returns to Bitcoin of 30, 40% plus per year over the next 10 years, right?

It makes sense to pay in 11.5, right, and borrow money. Yeah, but Andre, they don't need that. That's the part you're missing. It's in their deck. They only need Bitcoin to grow it a little bit over 2%. That's the part you're missing in the SDRC. To break even. They don't need the 30%.

You see, when you're, when, you know, Gary's going to appreciate this. You know, in real estate, if you own one quadplex and you're underwater, you got a problem. But when you own 4,000 doors or 4,000 apartments or 40,000 apartments and you get in trouble, that's the bank's problem, not yours. Because your asset base is so huge. And people tend to think, oh, how I work on it. The other thing you said that they're arbitraging fiat, they're arbitraising everything. They're capital formation.

There's a distinction between the gap accounting and the IRS treatment, which we just said, that they sell a high-cost Bitcoin, and they can have a realized game. or realize losses. They were unwilling to do that. That was all gap accounting because they were unrealized gains or losses. Now they're not only arbitraging the Fiat system, the debasement of currency that we all know, M2, they're also arbitraging the capital markets and they're able to use tax treatment that they were unwilling to do a week ago. That is the fundamental, there's three vectors here that they're doing. And they have this massive capital base. So if, again, And if you believe in Bitcoin and the company that has the most Bitcoin, and they do have about 10% leverage, which is the converts, which they're trying to get rid of.

Once they get rid of that, their balance sheet is completely clean. People are not going to understand this. They're going to keep on saying, people think that when you issue equity, they think that that's leverage. It's not. It's permanent capital. And in the sense that also they can now, it's permanent capital that they could sell at any time. That was the net the net unlock. And Scott, I can't wait to watch your interview of Sailor.

I did not talk to him this last time, but I did talk to Fong multiple times. And they're investor relations. But Garav has his hand up. Andrew, I'll take your questions. But it's somewhat leveraged because they have to pay the dividend deal. I mean, they can change that dividend deal, right? But like the way I think about scratch is more like. Andrew, I got a question for you.

Tell me what, tell me what bond, right? Right. There's all these corporate bonds that exist already. And in fact, they have a name for some of them called junk bonds. But all these bonds are those returns guaranteed? No, of course not. But like the way I think about a stretch is it's a fixed income instrument. And Saleh assessed it themselves, right?

It's a fixed income like instrument. And I mean, it's now trading at par, right? Close to par with an 11.5% interest dividend yield. So the duration of that bonds around 8.7, which is like a 10-year treasury bond, right? So if you say similar duration assets have with the risk-free rate for a similar duration asset, probably like 4.4, the 10-year yield, right? Which means SCRC already includes like a 7.1% risk premium, right? And that can change, right, depending on the credit quality.

If they increase leverage, that risk premium changes, or, and all the benchmark chains, risk-free rate changes, treasury yield goes up. So they need to bump up their dividend deal as well. Right, but their volatility is measured in BIPs. I don't think people even understand that. We don't even measure their volatility in percents anymore. There's 100 BIPs in 1%.

And we're talking, when Saylor says that the volatility on STRC is one penny, that's one bit. It's 1% of, it's 1% of 1%. That's why we call it one bit. That volatility is so low. And after May 26th, the 90-day volatility for this is going to be measured, like I said, in less than 20 basis points. That volatility is unheard of. And given also the volume that it trades per day, it's 20x any other preff.

I don't see, you know, that part of you're missing. missing on this, but I don't see why, you know, do you understand the order of magnitude on the volatility of this, that how low it is? That is engineer. We know that, right? Of course, from the one side by the insurance. Andre, I have a great question for you. From the other side from the dividend yield.

We know that, right? Yeah, but Andre, I have a question for you. You know, any company that does stock buybacks, isn't that financial engineering? Of course. Right. So what's the problem with financial engineering? MSTR is a large financial engineering instrument. I totally agreed.

I just said that. So the catch here is that not only is he doing financial engineering, but the volatility in STRC is off by a whole, almost 100x magnitude, lower volatility. That's the part that people can't understand, is that there's this massive difference. It's financial engineering, but because it's off by a whole order of magnitude,

people like, this is the one problem that they really have with STRC, I'll tell you guys what it is, is that it's the belief that it's too good to be. be true. That's a big problem, right? Because why are they paying 11.5%? If it was that good, they wouldn't have to pay, going this, they wouldn't have to pay that high of a risk premium. That's what you're saying, Andre. Exactly. And yeah, I think we all say that. And I think that the reason that they picked that number was basically to do, to be able to hoover up money despite that. That's what they're fighting. It was, Dave, it was established with the narrative of hitting the

fixed income market. You remember that statement from from Sailor at that time, right? They were targeting the fixed income market, fixed income market with the likes of in West Corp sits anywhere around 9 to 11. I mean, it was at the peak at 11 and settling to 9. And so obviously you have to do something better being a new player. Yes, I'm going to give a good example. and I used to have a job as a product manager

of launching products into the market. So what we would do is we'd spend money on advertising, search engine optimization, and reports to say how great a product is. And we would launch a product and we'd have a budget. And let's say the budget was $100,000 or a half million dollars or a million dollars. Now that money would not go to the people that were buying the product

that would go in order to get the awareness happened. What would Saylor decide to do this, in order to attract the so-called hot money that comes in fast, He said, I'll just pay a higher than what I need to pay on this. And this will go directly to the people that buy it. So instead of spending money on advertising, he gave it back to the investors and say, I will give you this higher yield in dividends in order for you to buy it. And that's what helped it ratchet up to get to the par.

So he paid that back to the investors. Now, which would you rather him do? Spend money on advertising and tell you how great the product is, which he already has 5 million followers on X, or give it back to the investors. And by the way, everybody knows business works like this because when I go buy a product, I go to the supermarket, I can get a coupon. And it gives me off either 50 cents or 10% or whatever, and then I redeem it. And he did that the exact same way.

So that's direct to the consumer to say, I can either spend money to you how great the product is and pay an athlete to say this is awesome. or I can give you a coupon to say that if you buy the product, you get this discount off or a fixed nominal amount. And what he did that was for the investors. So he did exactly what he did. And people are like, yeah, but why do you do this? It was the most efficient way to get the buzz about the product

and to reward the investors that were early. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, look, at the end of the day, if you're in these markets and you're trading Bitcoin, any thought that there isn't a structural bid, the reason why I made the statement about grinding rally is just think about this. So we're having this conversation. Nothing is going to change unless Bitcoin collapses from here. And I mean really collapses from here in terms of STRC being able to continue to generate more demand than is mind. So there is a structural, it's a structural up. At the same time, we all know what's going to

happen with monetary policy where things are going. And so it's, it's hard to be on the other side of that trade. You know, yet it's still, the sentiment is still there. I mean, the sentiment in, there's no, no exuberance in the trading market, right? I mean, some of the interesting things that are going on in the market. I mean, the old markets are, I mean, we can talk about it on Monday. we'll see what goes on over the weekend. But there are some pockets of interesting things. I mean, maybe the most interesting move, and we don't really have a lot of time.

I'm curious if anyone has noticed what's going on with Z-Cash over the last few days. And is that just, you know, another attempt to push something, or is that a privacy narrative that actually has legs? And yes, we shouldn't miss Torn in the next one. We shouldn't miss what? Torn, T-T-O-N, the Telegram Network. I'm sorry, the open network. Right.

So, I mean, you know, it's a little late to start talking about that now, but I do think we should talk about that next week. Yeah, exactly. And probably we'll see a little bit of settling of prices if, if probably wouldn't. Let me know what day that is, so I don't have to attend. I'm a Bitcoin bitch. That's what I am. Yeah.

And Gary, Gary, I'm sorry. I was discussing our lunch, a long-pending lunch in Tampa with Scott. But you didn't come here to Miami. No, I didn't come, man. I'm kind of conviction that, I think, for my life. Yeah, sure. I wish I'd be in that space in five years. Yeah.

Well, Gary, Gary, don't go, don't completely fade it, man, because this guy has an opportunity to create really the first network state with that blockchain. So I'm not saying I'm buying it, but I'm just, you know. Let's throw a party at my house. and you can educate me, but I just don't think I need to travel anymore. I hear you, brother. I can come today. Adam, are you here in Miami?

No, man. We can drive together. No, I'm down in Costa Rica, brother. Okay, cool. Yeah, I've taken the day. I'm in Miami, Gora, but I'm conferenceed out. No, not conference. I mean, we should meet.

I mean, we've barely taken it on WhatsApp ever, so I'll text you. Yeah, absolutely. But on that note, guys, it's 11,000. 13, unless we have something else to say, we're going to cut it here. And we'll see you all again on Monday morning. Well, let's see what happens over the weekend. I'm surprised, Dave. You didn't talk about Navidia and iron.

I thought that was an interesting deal. The structure, fascinating structure. Yeah. And I think May of last year, I suggested Navidia would be very good, well-suited with all that capital, to invest in parts of that. of the Bitcoin kind of a infrastructure that you know, the guys that take

all the risk. And sure enough, that's what they're doing now. We'll see how this goes. Iron had to give up a lot for that deal though, man. Well, the share price certainly seems to like it. You know, as a shareholder, I'm not

unhappy. And, you know, we'll see. You know, it's one of those things. I have to digest it over the weekend and decide, do I want to lighten up and take some profits because they're long-term capital gains. So from Nvidia's standpoint, they're just going to get the money back. Yeah, well, you know, Nvidia is an 800-pound gorilla in space, right? You know, the real thing for Iron, if you really want to go, what will convince me to sell

will be when SpaceX really does start to ramp up on space data centers because that's going to be the future for AI. But that's a long time in the future. But I am looking at it. From a narrative point of view, Irin that has some very, very strong, you know, short-term tailwinds. But it's the long-term one. That's actually what I care about. But that's a totally different question from Crypto Town Hall.

But it is interesting one, though. Well, I do think it's going to impact our world because, one, investment dollars are going to look at these other spaces and go, hey, look, I just got a, what, 15X on this? Bitcoin didn't do that. It's correlated, most certainly. You can't not look at it. I think it'd be silly not to look at it. Yeah, well, I just admitted that I'm not just looked at it. I've invested in it.

So yeah, I hear you. But, you know, that's exactly part of the reason that my thesis on Bitcoin is it grinds for a long time. I think that people are chasing the hot money is not there, right? But, you know, we'll see. I mean, the other story that we should talk about next week is it was a really good presentation on, you know, on the bit tensor economics and what's going on there in AI. I know Goraven, you and I could. I actually really would like to meet with you because I want to talk to you about more, get another level deeper there. But there are places in the ecosystem where you can see the green shoots, right?

And I think that's interesting. But the AI trade, the notion that this stuff was all going to die, which was a few weeks. ago. I mean, it wasn't all that long ago. I mean, you know, that the, like, Iron it's bottomed that it almost, well, it's almost doubled from its bottom and not quite, you know, but 75, 80% up, you know, these things move, right? I mean, the money, the volatility is just crazy, but so be it. Anyway, hey, Dave, can I just wrap it up with some, some good stuff, some, some positive of them? I'll be quick. Hey, look, guys, look, the S&P 500's at an all-time high. Do I think oil prices are going to drop, like Gary said? Probably.

At some point in the future, they're going to drop. This is probably about as good as it gets, right? You may or may not get a rate cut, and we're going to have a new Fed chairman, obviously. And so with that said, the price of Bitcoin's hovering at 80,000. If you're not happy with this, I don't know what to tell you, right? The world's not coming to an end. And I would say, I would be bullish over the weekend and be positive. Gore, if you want the last word? Yeah, on the note of what's working in Web 3 and the depressive state of the market altogether, my trip in the last nine days across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, New York, and Miami now, sort of wielded a interesting fact, which is not a surprise,

and that is the institutional side of crypto is roaring, and it's super hard, and there are acquisitions of billion dollars and stable coin payment rails and eugenic payments and whatnot. And so the three startups that won yesterday in consensus were all agentic payments and so on. So that talks a little about where we are heading and what's the positive side. And then sounds silly, but I was surprised to see that like out of the seven sponsors or eight sponsors are one of the best events here were actually my portfolio companies that were like intradify enabled by crypto. and they were like seriously doing good and I didn't have a chance to catch up with them on how incredible they were doing

in the last, you know, one year or so. So, you know, all the, all the silly, boring DFI use cases that were thrown out of the way after 2021, DFI summers are sort of becoming the ultimate survivors of the, of the, of the winters because they were, they were actually ripping real revenue. And of course, they were not.

not as smart looking or shiny as NFTs and memes, but they were the one that made it through the last four years. So I'm super excited about the state of Defi and payments enabled by CryptoRails in the coming six months, one year, and of course the next decade. Yeah, we could go an hour talking about that. There's a lot there. I had a lot of conversations on Defi, you know, as well. So we'll get to that next week. maybe we could stop talking about just Bitcoin in the market and actually talk about some crypto stuff. So we'll see if we can tee that up for Monday. So anyway, thank you all. Thank you.

Have a great weekend.